Will browser extension support be enough to tempt Android users away from Google Chrome to the welcoming arms of Microsoft Edge? We might soon find out, as it looks like Edge is now prepping extension support for its mobile app.
This comes from some digging into the Edge for Android code by tipster @Leopeva64 (via 9to5Google). For now the functionality is hidden behind a flag in the early testing versions of the app, but it could reach the main app as early as March.
Certain extensions – for switching to dark mode, for blocking ads, and for changing the speed of media playback – are already showing up on a rudimentary extensions page, which is another sign that the feature is launching soon.
From the screenshots that have been posted so far, it looks as though a new Extensions button will be added to the menu that pops up when you tap the three horizontal lines, down in the lower-right corner of the Edge for Android interface.
It will be possible to install extensions in Edge for Android!:https://t.co/18lG5nYyad pic.twitter.com/Sj744tPo6zJanuary 31, 2024
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Extended features
Firefox recently added extension support to its Android app (Image credit: Future)
You may well know how useful third-party extensions can be on a desktop browser, adding all kinds of additional tools and features to your browser of choice – from changing the way tabs are arranged, to letting you annotate webpages, to managing website volume.
While there are a huge number of extensions available for Chrome on the desktop, Chrome and other browsers have typically shied away from adding extension support on mobile, for a host of different reasons: the screens are smaller, there are fewer system resources available, the interface is simpler, and so on.
Now though, the situation is changing. Firefox recently reintroduced extension support in its Android app, and now it looks as though Edge will follow suit – in an attempt to try and chip away at Chrome's market share. Chrome is the default on around two-thirds of mobile devices worldwide, though that includes iPhones as well as Android devices.
You won't be able to use all the existing Edge extensions on Android – clearly not all of them will work, and the developers will have to adapt them for the different platform – but watch this space for these add-ons arriving on Microsoft's browser.
Let’s face it, almost everyone could use a bit of help saving money these days, with the cost-of-living crisis and various inflationary pressures still kicking around globally, alongside other factors that can make finances a struggle.
I’ve certainly been counting the pennies here and there, but one area where I’ve slacked off is with web browsing. I have, of course, been aware that there are ways to save money using extensions for my chosen web browser – Chrome – but I just haven't got round to doing anything about it, or installing any of those helpful add-ons.
That’s all about to change. Read on to see the extensions that I’m going to enlist in an effort to save me a bit of cash over the course of 2024, in case you might want to follow in my footsteps.
Honey, I shrunk the price tag
Why haven’t I used Chrome extensions to help with online shopping before? It’s a good question, and one that I don’t have a good answer for. ‘Procrastination’ about sums it up, though.
Anyway, for money-saving, the recommendation from my fellow colleagues (TechRadarians, if you will) is that one of the most important extensions that I should make a beeline for is Honey (pun fully intended, in all its awfulness).
(Image credit: Honey)
What’s Honey? It’s an extension from PayPal that’s essentially an online shopping assistant, so when buying a product in Chrome, Honey will also scour the web for coupons for the best discount. These can then be applied and one way or another, I’m hoping I’ll save a bit of cash. Plus it’s possible to get cashback reward points on top, as a bonus, for those who have a PayPal account in ‘good standing’ (but only with participating retailers).
There will likely only be small savings here and there, but as they say, it all adds up, and over the course of next year I’m hoping to be a noticeably better off by the time the online shopping dust settles.
Camel companion
3 tips for saving money with your Windows PC
1. Power settings
Type ‘power’ in the search box on the taskbar and click on the option for ‘Power and sleep settings.’ In here, you can set your monitor and PC to go to sleep after a short while of not being used, making some power savings on your energy bill. 2. Power settings part deux
While in the ‘Power and sleep’ panel, check out the ‘Additional power settings’ link which allows you to specify more frugal power plans if you really want to cut the running cost of your PC (but remember, doing so will impact performance). 3. Tab taming
One of TechRadar’s best Chrome extensions, Tab Wrangler is great if you’re a tab addict like me. It automatically closes tabs that aren’t being used (but you can easily fire them up again), helping to save a tiny bit of power usage.
The Camelizer is another extension I intend to bag in the new year as a partner to Honey for saving money on my online shopping. It's widely used by the TechRadar team all year round, but particularly during shopping events like Prime Day and Black Friday.
The Chrome add-on is particularly handy for anyone like myself who’s a Prime member and orders regularly from Amazon – because it tracks historical Amazon pricing.
For most Amazon products, the extension serves up a graph of how its pricing has dropped, and risen, over time. That way, I can be sure of whether any item really is at a good price, or if it might be likely to drop a good chunk again (perhaps at the next big sale), so I can wait and save more if that’s a likely prospect. This extension also gives me the ability to have an alert piped through if a product drops to a certain price level – pretty nifty.
(Image credit: Future)
If you're in the US, the aforementioned Honey does also have a price tracking feature for Amazon. I live in the UK, though, and Honey won’t track anything but Amazon.com (US) pricing – so myself, and everyone else across the globe, needs an alternative.
The Camelizer extension (and another alternative, Keepa) are built especially for this purpose, and provide more detailed info on price history than Honey (including third-party marketplace listings, and second-hand prices for that matter).
Cashing in with cashback
Lastly, another recommendation given to me by TechRadar's online shopping whizzes has been TopCashback. The savings made with this service – in the form of cashback returns, as you might guess, on purchases – can really add up. I’ve seen the evidence of this, and don’t need any more convincing – moreover, the Chrome extension is a great way to access these benefits.
The idea is simple: a load of companies sign up with TopCashback and when anyone makes purchases from those retailers, TopCashback gives the buyer a certain percentage of cashback on the outlay.
With the normal service, the user needs to go to the TopCashback website and search for the retailer to see if they’ve signed up to the scheme, and what items might apply. It’s all a bit clunky, but the beauty of the Chrome extension is that it automatically checks any site visited and flags available cashback offers on products, which is much more convenient.
(Image credit: Future)
To get cashback, all you need to do is click the ‘activate’ prompt that pops up when buying something. This Chrome add-on also flags up some voucher codes as a bonus.
The slight catch with the extension is that not every retailer is supported. But most are, and the convenience aspect is what swings it for me. I don’t really fancy having to constantly navigate to the website to perform pre-purchase searches (and realistically, I’ll probably forget to do so half the time anyway).
I'm also going to risk the temptation of filling up my Chrome toolbar with more extensions than the three that I've mentioned (Honey, The Camelizer and TopCashback). While I'm aware that there are countless others (including Rakuten, Fakespot and more), I'll be starting the year with that golden trio – and if you fancy saving some money in 2024, you should too.
Google has released yet another year-end list, and this time, the tech giant goes over what it thinks are the best Chrome extensions for 2023.
It’s similar to the 10 best Android app awards from last month; however instead of highlighting different kinds of software, the company is focusing on extensions that help you with work or navigating the internet. It didn’t really touch upon any entertainment plugin.
The first group pertains to AI-powered software that aims to “get tasks done faster”. You have Scribe which utilizes artificial intelligence to “document your workflows”, then create step-by-step instructions for other people to follow. DeepL Translate does as the name suggests: translate web pages for you on the fly. It can even instantly change the language of your writing without having to run it through Google Translate. Sider is one of the more interesting suggestions as it lets you access ChatGPT through a sidebar.
(Image credit: Future)
QuillBot helps you write emails or summarize news articles in front of you. And Teal lets you bookmark job listings on online boards as well as track applications in a single location.
Accessibility tools
From here, we start to see the accessibility tools such as Transkriptor to record audio meetings into text for later reference. Google also recommends installing Equalizer onto Chrome to add better audio controls for media. It lets you create a unique listening experience just by moving the sliders up or down.
(Image credit: Future)
If you’re having trouble with (or just don’t feel like) perusing emails or PDFs, users can download Speechify to have a natural-sounding AI voice read it out loud for you. This one is pretty amusing because Snoop Dogg is one of the voices and it’s a very surreal experience hearing him read something you wrote on Google Docs. There isn’t much in the way of customization extensions apart from Bonjourr transforming homepages into a minimalistic centerpiece by removing the search bar and widgets.
Glaring omission
Google caps off the list with a trio of miscellaneous extensions: Coupert helps people find promo codes online, Boxel 3D adds a mini platformer game for whenever you want to take a break, and BTRoblox introduces new features to the Roblox website.
What’s particularly funny about this list is that there isn’t a single adblocker anywhere. If you at other best Chrome extension roundups, you will almost always find an adblocker on there just like our old one from 2022. It’s not super surprising this is the case. Google has been at war against ad-blockers for the past several months, seeking to remove them from Chrome and YouTube altogether.
It makes sense the company wouldn't want to highlight something they’re not a fan of, but we certainly will because we know you're fans of them. Be sure to check out TechRadar’s list of the best ad blockers for 2023.
Google Bard has finally found its legs after an incredibly rocky start and a long game of catch-up with other chatbots like ChatGPT and Microsofts’ Bing Chat. Luckily for Google, Bard has picked up the slack and introduced a whole lot of new features since its launch. Now, extensions may soon be coming to Bard and be the final push it needs to meet and maybe surpass ChatGPT.
During Google I/O 2023, the company mentioned developing extension support for Bard, and while the tech giant has delivered on many of the other features – including image-generation capabilities, maps integration, and better logical understanding – we haven’t had any updates about extension support.
But that could be about to change. Dylan Roussel from 9to5google has uncovered an early preview of what the extensions could look like within the Bard web app. While the UI is available, from the preview it doesn’t seem like any of the extensions actually work – yet.
(Image credit: 9to5Google )
Let's go to the beach!
These extensions include Google Flights, Hotels, and Maps, as well as Youtube and even Zillow. It’s interesting to see the selection of services offered, as all the extensions combined look a lot like travel planning essentials.
This could suggest Google is planning to push Bard as a planning assistant, which in all honesty is a really good idea to begin solidifying Bard into our everyday endeavors. Rather than unleash the chatbot on a ‘blank user template’ so to speak, Google’s plan to align Bard with basic travel planning could mean more people will be inclined to get acquainted with the chatbot and its new extensions.
In any case, these extensions will essentially bring Bard up to par with ChatGPT, and give the quirky bot a leg up in the race for AI supremacy.
With the popularity of ChatGPT, the amount of Chrome extensions out there is ever-expanding. Some are helpful, though a lot of them… aren’t that great. However, we’ve found a few of the best extensions out there to minimise the search and maximise the ChatGPT experience on Chrome.
You can’t be part of daily internet culture, or at the least be a person with access to the internet, and escape the ChatGPT discourse – whether you want to or not. That, and South Park just covered it, so you know, it’s a pretty big deal right now.
For anyone needing a quick refresher, ChatGPT is the language-based chatbot created by OpenAI that allows you to generate text-based answers to questions about the universe, prompts for poems or brainstorm ideas (and much more). You can use ChatGPT for many things, with the only fundamental limitations being your imagination (and the fact that the responses are text-based, of course).
If you’re using ChatGPT for free or paying for the Plus membership, interacting with the bot is definitely an experience, to say the least. The conversational tone is almost disarming when you’re trying to probe whether or not it’s planning to take over the world or asking it for love life advice.
However, the user interface of ChatGPT is pretty basic compared to its capabilities. While we await further updates and feature expansions, third-party browser extensions are your friend if you want easier, quicker access to ChatGPT and add features to make the most of the AI bot.
ChatGPT for Google
The chrome extension ChatGPT for Google is a must-have if you’re looking to integrate AI more into your daily life and make the most out of that vast fountain of knowledge. The extension will show results from the chatbot alongside standard Google search results, so you can get a quick brief of whatever you’re googling while you scan results for the right page.
Some queries will work better than others with this: you won’t get the latest weather or sports reports, but you can get pretty in-depth answers to questions about human biology, basic cleaning hacks and history facts. Most of your queries will likely be accompanied by a ChatGPT response, but do be prepared for the bot to draw a blank sometimes.
A little box in the corner is integrated alongside the usual search results, and you’ll be able to launch a conversion with ChatGPT right off the page if you want to chat about it or learn more.
(Image credit: Future)
Use Voice Commands – Promptheus
Fan of Alexa or Siri? Want to take the conversation into the real world (on your end anyway) and get responses quickly without having to type it all out? Promptheus is for you! This Chrome extension lets you talk directly to ChatGPT using the spacebar on your keyboard so you can skip typing and get answers to all your burning questions by using your voice.
Once you install the extension, open up Chrome, head to ChatGPT and hold the spacebar to start talking. We used it a few times when writing this article, and it does speed up the workflow, since you’re just swapping tabs, asking your question, reading the answer and moving on.
ChatGPT Export and Share
Currently, if you want to get content out of ChatGPT into other places you have to rely on the old faithful cut and paste, but with ChatGPT Export and Share (which works with Chrome, Edge and Firefox) you can streamline the export process in ChatGPT.
It may take a minute to set it up in the browser, but once you’re all done you’ll get new export buttons near the prompt box to make things a whole lot easier when you’re ready to save your content.
You’ll have options to save your conversations as images or PDFs, and you can create shareable links too if you have something special you want to share quickly.
Merlin
With Merlin you can have ChatGPT at the tips of your fingers and pull it up with no problems. The extension lets you summarize large blocks of text or reply to an email at any time, essentially giving you a little AI assistant at your beck and call!
Once you’ve got the extension installed, select a block of text and then hit Ctrl + M on Windows or Cmd + M on macOS, and then tell Merlin what you want ChatGPT to do. Summarize, reply, write etc. If you’ve got a tricky email you need to respond to, just select the text in the email thread, bring up Merlin and have ChatGPT write a diplomatic response for you.
Since there’s a simple keyboard shortcut to activate the extension, it’s really easy to incorporate Merlin into your daily grind very quickly, though do keep in mind that you’re limited to about 31 requests per day.
We’ve only listed a few extensions in this article so far, but we hope to add more extensions as they crop up and as people come to grips with ChatGPT. We’re only just seeing how ChatGPT fits into our lives as it becomes more mainstream, so there’s no doubt that as the technology cements itself into the day-to-day and more people find interesting ways to utilise ChatGPT we’ll be seeing a lot more useful extensions.
The transition to working from home during the pandemic drastically changed the way in which we use technology with the browser becoming one of the most important tools for remote work.
Now as we've reached the two-year mark of the start of the pandemic, Mozilla has published a new blog post taking a closer look at which browser extensions were the most downloaded and used during the early days of the lockdown in Firefox.
As meetings went virtual with employees relying on video conferencing software like Zoom to connect with their teams, the browser extension Zoom Scheduler saw a 1,522 percent increase in installs. This is because it integrates Google Calendar with Zoom so that users can scheduler or start their Zoom meetings directly from their calendar.
Since remote workers also spent more time looking at their work from home monitors, the Dark Background and Light Text extension, which flips the colors of webpages to make them more visible, saw a 351 percent increase in installs at the beginning of the pandemic. Likewise, the Tree Style Tab extension also experienced a 126 percent increase in downloads as it can help users deal with tab overload by opening browser tabs in a cascading “tree” format similar to vertical tabs in Microsoft Edge.
Protecting our privacy and staying entertained
Cybercrime ran rampant during the beginning of the pandemic so in addition to using a VPN and antivirus software when working remotely, Firefox users also began installing privacy extensions for their browser.
Cookie AutoDelete, which eliminates unused cookies whenever you close a tab in Firefox, saw its install numbers skyrocket by 386 percent and the browser extension also averaged more than 206k installs per month between March and May of 2020.
As remote workers used Facebook's social media platform to stay connected during lockdown, Mozilla's own Facebook Container was another popular browser extension. This extension isolates your Facebook identity into a separate “container” so that the social media giant can't track your moves around the web.
Blocking trackers was also important to those working from home during the pandemic which is why the Privacy Badger browser extension saw installs jump by 80 percent globally. An interesting thing about this browser extension is that it gets better at blocking trackers the longer you use it since Privacy Badger “learns” more about the hidden trackers you naturally encounter while online.
When it came to staying entertained while in lockdown, Firefox users installed the BetterTTV browser extension to alter the look and feel of Twitch, the Watch2gether extension to have watch parties with friends and colleagues online and YouTube Non-Stop to solve the problem of the video platform's annoying “Video paused. Continue watching?” prompt.
Regardless of which browser you're currently using, browser extensions can help add to your online experience and make the software and services you depend on while working from home even more useful.
Customizing Mozilla's browser with add-ons can give you a whole new experience when browsing the web though only one-third of Firefox users have installed an extension or theme.
Among the 100m+ users that did install an extension this year, adblockers were the most popular with Adblock Plus taking the top spot followed by uBlock Origin. Across the span of 2021, Adblock Plus had an average of over 6.1m daily users while uBlock Origin averaged just over 5m+ daily users over the course of the year.
While Adblock Plus led the charge at the beginning of the year, uBlock Origin was able to close the gap and if current usage trends among Firefox users continue, it may take the top spot in early 2022 according to a new blog post from Mozilla.
One of the reasons users choose Firefox as their preferred browser is to further protect their privacy online. While adblockers can stop ads from following you around the web, other popular extensions this year that protect against invasive tracking include Mozilla's own Facebook Container with 1.7m daily active users and Ghostery with 1.1m daily active users.
Firefox Recommended Extensions
In addition to putting out a list of the most popular extensions each year, the Firefox Recommended Extensions program is a curated list of third party extensions that meet Mozilla's highest standards of security, utility and user experience.
For those who often find themselves drowning in a sea of open browser tabs, Tab Stash may be the perfect extension as it adds a toolbar button that when clicked, saves all of your open tabs as temporary bookmarks. If you're using Firefox Sync, the service will automatically show your Tab Stash bookmarks synced to other devices.
Another interesting extension highlighted by Mozilla is Stylebot. This extension gives you the power to dramatically alter the way any website looks from font sizes to color schemes to content layout. Perhaps you're intrigued by vertical tabs in Microsoft Edge? Then the Sideberry extension can be used to organize your open tabs in a cascading “tree” tucked away to the side of your browser.
While web browsers have certainly come a long way, extensions allow you to further customize their look and fell as well as their functionality which can help you be more productive or just have a better browsing experience overall.
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