By Jessica Nguyen & Brian Pham
Google Chrome is a popular web browser that many people use every day, whether it be searching for information or casually browsing the Internet. But it offers so much more than just that.
Chrome comes with a variety of useful extensions with numerous abilities and functions that can make your life easier.
Mailtrack
Mailtrack is a free Chrome extension that allows you to trace your emails to see if your email has been opened. Emails can be filtered based on whether they have been read or not, making it easy to see if someone is ignoring your message or just hasn’t seen it yet.
Mailtrack also comes with a paid version that reveals how many times your email has been opened and how long ago. There are plenty of other email tracking extensions such as Free Email Tracker and MailTag.
Teleparty (formerly known as Netflix Party)
Teleparty is another free Chrome extension that allows you to have virtual “parties” with your friends and watch Netflix together. The video is streamed to all members of the party at the same time and there is a chat that allows everyone to talk.
For this extension to work, both you and your friend need to have Netflix accounts. This extension is especially useful during the pandemic when it is harder to meet in person to watch shows together. If Netflix isn’t your preferred streaming service of choice, there are also apps for Disney+ and YouTube.
Dark Reader
Especially during quarantine, many people spend a majority of their time in front of their computer screen on a Zoom meeting or watching videos. It makes it important to take care of your eyes with Dark Reader, which enables night mode and dark themes on websites by inverting colors and making them easier to read at night. Dark Reader also allows you to adjust brightness, font settings, contrast, dark mode and sepia filter.
Having dark mode enabled comes with other benefits, including saving battery life, reducing screen glare and helping you sleep better if you often use electronic devices before bed!
EasyBib
EasyBib is an easy way to create citations with just a single click. It allows you to build fully-formatted and alphabetized bibliographical pages. You can also receive advice on the credibility of sites for writing research essays.
Screencastify
Screencastify is a free and easy way to record your screen. While options like Zoom and Google Meet allow you to record meetings, they can often make your computer lag due to the high Central Processing Unit (CPU) usage. Recording with an extension does not take up as much CPU and is easy to turn on and off.
Screencastify can connect directly to Google Drive and YouTube accounts for easy uploading. In addition, you can edit your videos on the extension, making the extension simple to use and multi-utility.
There are plenty of tools and extensions that you can use to make your Google Chrome experience, so make sure to take advantage of them!
