Today, I want to share my 11 best free Chrome extensions, all of which I have been using for a long time and have found helpful. You can easily install them via the Chrome Web Store. When you visit the Chrome Web Store, you’ll find a wide variety of extensions, ranging from productivity tools to lifestyle enhancers and even customization options.
Google Chrome is the most popular browser, holding over 60% of the market share, as I mentioned in my previous post, Chrome vs. Edge. Many browsers, such as Edge, Opera, and Brave, are Chromium-based, which makes them compatible with and supportive of Chrome extensions. This compatibility encourages more developers to contribute their efforts to creating Chrome extensions, further expanding the options available for users.
Below is an overview table of my 11 best free Chrome extensions (not ranked by order) you should try in 2025:
1. Grammarly
- Real-time grammar, spelling, and punctuation checks
- Writing style suggestions for clarity and tone
- Integrates with emails, social media, and Google Docs
- Free and premium plans available
Grammarly is not only available on desktop and mobile apps but also as a browser extension. It offers two plans: a free version and a paid version (Pro or Enterprise). The free version is sufficient for casual, individual use. For me, I use it to check the basic grammar, punctuation, and spelling of my written content. It provides suggestions, automatically corrects spelling, analyzes your writing tone, gives feedback, and even helps you write more efficiently with its generative AI assistant.
Below is an example of my content with grammar issues in Google Docs. Grammarly will underline the problematic text, and a sidebar will display suggestions. You can accept these suggestions to refine your content.
Once you activate the Grammarly extension, you’ll see a floating icon. Click it to open the prompt chat and use the AI assistant. You can highlight your content, write a prompt to ask for help, or click on “More Ideas” to access pre-existing prompts, including rewriting, generating ideas, drafting content outlines, improving your writing, adjusting tone, and generating content with AI.
Please note that you can use the generative AI assistant, but with a limit of 100 prompts on the free plan. You can check your current available prompts by clicking the lightbulb icon in the upper-right corner, which will also show how many days are left until your next refill. If you rely heavily on this feature, you can consider subscribing to a paid plan like the Pro Plan to access higher limits.
I highly recommend Grammarly as it is incredibly useful for writing, whether you’re composing emails, assignments, working on documents, or posting on social media. The real-time feedback and suggestions make it easy to correct and improve your content.
2. uBlock Origin
- Blocks ads, trackers, and malicious scripts
- Lightweight, no browser slowdown
- Customizable filter options
- Protects privacy
uBlock Origin—as the name suggests—blocks various content during your browsing. What I like about it is that it doesn’t just block ads; it also prevents trackers that collect your personal information, unnecessary pop-up content, large media elements (heavy on bandwidth), and even JavaScript that’s used for flashy animations and interactive interfaces. Unlike other ad-blockers, uBlock Origin’s slogan, “Not just an ad blocker,” highlights its role as a wide-spectrum content blocker, designed with CPU and memory efficiency as its primary focus.
Personally, I use uBlock Origin to block ads on news websites and video platforms that often disrupt my browsing experience. Be careful when blocking JavaScript, as it can affect the functionality of your webpage. By blocking these elements, it not only makes the interface cleaner and clearer—free from cluttered ads—but it also speeds up page load times, reduces CPU and memory usage, and ultimately improves your browsing experience. Plus, it helps extend battery life.
3. Toby
- Organize tabs into collections
- Save and reopen browsing sessions
- Sync across devices
- Clean, task-focused dashboard
If you’re like me and often have many tabs open at once for multitasking, especially when they’re spread across horizontal tabs, it can create a cluttered workspace. This makes it hard to find specific tabs, decreases productivity, and can even cause lag or slow down your browser’s performance.
Additionally, when doing research on multiple projects, you might come across many research papers and save them to your browser’s default bookmarks. While bookmarks can help store research sources in specific folders, they are less efficient and lack proper organization. Every time you need to access them, you’ll have to reopen all the tabs manually, one by one.
I found the Toby extension, which is free and provides an organized dashboard to help you manage and save your tabs in collections. You can reopen your saved tab sessions with a simple click, staying productive and focused with collections that keep your tasks separated.
Once you activate the Toby extension, opening a new tab will display Toby’s minimalistic visual dashboard. While browsers have their own tab grouping features, the Toby dashboard offers a more structured overview of your tabs and allows you to save your sessions. This means you won’t lose track of your tabs, even after closing and reopening Chrome.
4. Loom
- Record screen, window, or tab with webcam
- Share videos instantly via link
- Free plan supports 5-minute recordings
- Upgrade for unlimited recording and downloads
Loom is a popular Chrome extension focus on video recording that lets you quickly record your screen with your camera directly from your browser. Whether you want to capture a window, your entire screen, or just a Chrome tab, Loom makes it super simple.
You can use Loom to record tutorials, presentations, or share visual information with ease. Just pin the Loom extension to your browser, click the start recording button, and you’re ready to go. Once your video is recorded, Loom generates a shareable link instantly, so you can send it via email or messaging apps without needing to upload it anywhere—Loom hosts the video for you.
While Loom offers a free plan, it comes with limitations: you can only record up to 25 videos, each with a maximum length of 5 minutes. Honestly, the free plan is more like a trial to see if Loom works for you, as many features are locked. If you find Loom helpful and plan to use it regularly, it’s worth upgrading to a paid plan. With a subscription, you’ll unlock features like unlimited video recordings, longer recording durations, basic video editing tools, and the ability to download your videos for offline use.
But don’t worry, I’ll suggest an alternative extension next: Awesome Screenshot, which offers more features in its free plan compared to Loom.
5. Awesome Screenshot
- Capture screenshots (area, page, window)
- Screen recording with annotation tools
- Includes cropping, blurring, and text tools
- Free plan with downloadable files and cloud storage
Awesome Screenshot isn’t just for screen recording—it also supports screenshot capture, which Loom doesn’t offer. Plus, Awesome Screenshot’s free plan includes more features compared to Loom’s free plan. While both extensions limit recording time on their free tiers, Awesome Screenshot allows you to download your recordings, whereas Loom requires an upgrade for this feature.
One thing I love about Awesome Screenshot is its screenshot capture capabilities, especially the full-page option. It lets you capture an entire webpage, no matter how long it is, in a single image. After capturing, you’re taken to the annotation tool, where you can crop, draw with a pen, highlight, add rectangles and arrows, blur sensitive areas, and insert text. Once you’re done editing, you can save the image directly to your desktop.
The free plan is great for basic use, but if you need advanced features, such as higher recording resolutions, access to all annotation tools, and unlimited cloud storage for screenshots and recordings, upgrading is worth considering.
6. Pocket (Save to Pocket)
- Save articles, pages, and videos for later
- Offline access via Pocket app
- Removes ads for distraction-free reading
- Sync across devices
Pocket is a space where you can save content while browsing—whether it’s a webpage like an article, research, news, or even videos and images. Instead of cluttering your browser with tabs or bookmarks, Pocket offers a great alternative to save and organize your content.
One of Pocket’s key advantages is that you can access your saved content offline. To do this, simply sync your Pocket app with your account across devices like your phone or tablet. For example, you can save articles on your laptop and then open the Pocket app on your mobile device to fetch and download those articles for offline access.
Pocket also enhances your reading experience by automatically clearing ads and unnecessary pop-ups from saved pages, giving you a clean and distraction-free layout to enjoy your content.
7. Dark Reader
- Enables dark mode on all websites
- Adjustable brightness, contrast, sepia tones
- Reduces eye strain
For those who want to use dark mode to reduce eye strain in low-light environments, using browser’s built-in dark mode theme which only apply to the browser interface (like menus and settings). Also, there are not customization settings to fine-tune the dark mode to your liking.
Here, I highly recommend trying Dark Reader. This extension lets you adjust the brightness, contrast, and even the sepia tone of web pages. Unlike many browsers’ built-in dark modes, which only apply to the browser interface or websites that natively support dark mode, Dark Reader forces dark mode on all websites. It also adjusts ads, pop-ups, and other dynamic elements that might otherwise remain bright, offering a truly dark and consistent browsing experience.
8. Bitwarden
- Secure password and data manager
- Free plan with unlimited password storage
- Cross-platform syncing
- Password generator and autofill
Remembering unique and strong passwords for every account can be a real headache. Writing them down or saving them locally on your desktop or in a notebook might seem convenient, but it’s risky—anyone could access them without authorization.
That’s why I recommend Bitwarden, my favorite password manager extension. It securely stores and manages your passwords, credit card details, and other sensitive information in one place. Unlike your browser’s built-in password-saving feature, Bitwarden takes security up a notch with advanced encryption and cross-platform syncing.
What’s great about Bitwarden is how generous its free plan is. You get unlimited password storage, syncing across all your devices, and a built-in password generator. Whether you’re logging into social media, online banking, or shopping sites, Bitwarden will auto-filling your credentials.
9. Adobe Acrobat: PDF Tool
- View, annotate, and sign PDFs
- Comment, highlight, and draw tools
- Free plan with basic features
- Pro plan unlocks advanced features
Whether you’re a student or working professional, dealing with PDF documents is part of daily life—whether it’s for viewing, printing, annotating, or signing. If you rely on a browser like Google Chrome’s built-in PDF viewer, you’re limited to basic functions like viewing and reading. It’s too basic and not convenient if you need advanced editing tools.
That’s why I recommend Adobe Acrobat. With it, you can easily annotate your PDFs by drawing with a pen, highlighting, adding comments, underlining text, and even adding text or a signature. These tools are perfect for most casual users, and the best part? You can access all of them with Adobe’s free plan. For more advanced features—like inserting images, organizing pages, converting PDFs to JPGs or Word, compressing files, or combining documents, you’ll need to upgrade to the Pro Plan.
10. Imageye
- Download images in bulk from any website
- Filter by resolution, size, and format
- Easy-to-use interface
When browsing the web, have you ever wanted to download an image but couldn’t because the website doesn’t offer a download option? Or perhaps you want to download all the images from a webpage but end up downloading them one by one? This is where Imageye comes in handy.
Imageye is a browser extension that makes downloading images incredibly easy. Whether it’s a single image or multiple images on a page, this extension scans the webpage and displays all the images it finds in a clear grid view. From there, you can choose specific images to download or save them all at once.
The best part? You can filter images by size, type, or layout—perfect for finding high-quality images without the hassle. This feature is especially useful for designers, researchers, or anyone who frequently saves images for reference or projects.
With Imageye, you can bypass restrictions, save hidden images, and stay productive while gathering visual content. Best of all, it’s free—a must-have tool for anyone who regularly works with images.
11. Video DownloadHelper
- Download videos and images from websites
- Supports multiple formats and resolutions
- Convert videos with additional plugins
Some websites block or disable downloading to encourage views on their platform. Video downloader extensions help bypass these restrictions (legally or otherwise). I suggest Video DownloadHelper because it’s one of the most versatile and reliable video downloader extensions available. It’s a tool I personally use and highly recommend.
When you play a video on a webpage, simply click the extension, and it will list all available download options for the video you’re watching. Not only can you download videos in various formats (MP4, WebM, etc.) and resolutions (HD, Full HD, etc.), but you can also choose to download audio-only files if needed. The download speed is fast and efficient, so you don’t have to worry about delays.
The 11 extensions I shared here are all worth trying in 2025. Whether it’s managing tabs, capturing and recording your screen, safeguarding sensitive information, or downloading images and videos, each extension offers unique benefits to enhance your browsing experience.
Which extension is your favorite? Or do you have any must-try recommendations? Share your thoughts in the comments below!
