Ask HN: What browser extensions are a must-have in 2021?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29314560

by johnnyApplePRNG • 5 years ago

249 311 5 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

I've had uBlock Origin and NoScript installed faithfully for the past few years at least...

Kind of annoying having to whitelist every website I visit on NoScript these days but worth it imho.

Just curious if there are any others out there I should check out.

nathanaldensr• 5 years ago

I stopped using NoScript because the micromanagement of domain names simply took too much time. I rely on Pi-hole to fill that gap somewhat.

To answer your question (Firefox on desktop and mobile):

- uBlock Origin

- Privacy Badger

- HTTPS Everywhere

- Enhancer for YouTube

- Multi-account Containers

- Owl

TomDavey• 5 years ago

Also on Firefox. It appears that I'm not as privacy/security conscious as are most in this thread, but I heartily second HTTPS Everywhere.

However, the single Firefox extension that's indispensable to me is Tree Style Tabs. See: https://github.com/piroor/treestyletab.

Is it possible (for a Web page hoarder like me) to organize and access 500+ tabs across seven Firefox windows? You betcha it is, with Tree Style Tabs.

ovl314• 5 years ago

Newer versions of firefox and other major browsers have a HTTPS Only mode now, which removes the need for HTTPS Everywhere and it will be deprecated -> https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/09/electronic-frontier-.... You can enable HTTPS Onlu mode on firefox under settings -> Privacy & Security

syntheticnature• 5 years ago

I've played with Tree Style Tabs, but it seems like there's some configuration required for the optimal result. So I ask: have you done any configuration changes to it?

kartoshechka2• 5 years ago

In the same vein I'd recommend Sidebery https://github.com/mbnuqw/sidebery for tree style tabs.

It has more sane defaults, even some animations, very accessible customization (e.g. you can theme every bit of bar in extension settings, not needing to go to chrome.css). It's also can be used as a basic browser "window manager", given that you can't split window into panes, but you can have multiple tab groups in one window and quickly switch between them.

jmnicolas2• 5 years ago

to organize and access 500+ tabs across seven Firefox windows

What motherboard did you get to have one terabyte of RAM? :D

NylaTheWolf7• 5 years ago

Ah, a fellow Tab Hoarder! I've been using Firefox quite a bit lately and I really like Tree Style Tabs

amarshall• 5 years ago

HTTPS Everywhere is going away next year. For more details see https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/09/https-actually-everywh...

kirenida• 5 years ago

Just in case you didn't know about this: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/10/privacy-badger-changin...

I remember finding out about it in a thread on reddit, they concluded that after this change there is no point in using privacybadger if you're already using ublock, for example.

nichos• 5 years ago

I can't live without this one:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/i-dont-care-a...

Blocks the "consent to cookies" modal sites are required to have thanks to some terrible legislation.

enriquto4• 5 years ago

Nice extension. But I'd say that the legislation is alright, it's these sites that are terrible. They put these modals because they want to.

DocTomoe• 5 years ago

The legislation has the right heart, but its wording is problematic and leaves up too much on interpretation, so most sites who technically wouldn't need it just default to a cookie banner to be 'on the safe side'.

Combine that with the zealots (I've had an user complain about the absence of a cookie banner on a site that clearly did not need one), them potentially becoming a lawsuit initiator, and you got the mess you have now.

Writing good laws without unintended consequences is hard.

JimWestergren• 5 years ago

Not needed if you use uBlock Origin

abainbridge• 5 years ago

That's not what I see. With uBlock Origin installed, if I visit news.bbc.co.uk, for example, I still get the accept cookies banner.

holonomically• 5 years ago

Vimium.

spindle• 5 years ago

I use a browser/OS combo that makes it very difficult to use any add-ons except for a DNS-based adblocker, and the only thing I miss is a password-filler-inner.

dartharva• 5 years ago

Bypass paywalls clean

Ublock origin

Decentraleyes

Bitwarden

Also, turn on the privacy.resistFingerprinting flag in Firefox about:config.

invokestatic• 5 years ago

resistFingerprinting has kind of a nasty side effect of making every website think you are in UTC. I put up with it, but I’m sure others may find it annoying.

treenurse3• 5 years ago

Ah, this explains why Uber Eats gives me ETA in UTC...

invalidname• 5 years ago

Bypass paywalls clean seems really nice. Thanks!

dktoao• 5 years ago

I like markdown here. Allows you to format you emails ( and other stuff ?? ) with markdown

tehnub• 5 years ago

- uBlock Origin for FF and Chrome. For Safari (on both macOS and iOS) I use wipr.

- Dark Reader

acheron• 5 years ago

+ to Dark Reader. Can’t stand most websites without it. Not sure how we switched from a dark screen to wanting everybody to stare into a bright lightbulb all day, but I’m glad things are finally going back.

jrockway• 5 years ago

I was kind of forced into the Dark Reader way of life and I love it. I got a monitor with Adobe RGB color gamut. I have no use for this, and the OS doesn't understand it, so by default all colors are wrong. I know it's wrong and it makes me mad. So I put the monitor into sRGB mode. But in that mode, you can't adjust the brightness and so things are way too bright. I use dark mode for everything, though, so it's not too bad. The improved contrast ratio is actually excellent, and I much prefer a too-bright monitor in dark mode to a dim monitor in either bright or dark mode.

Dark Reader was the missing link for web designers that won't make a dark mode. Honestly, in a lot of cases it does a nicer job than the designer, so for a few sites I opt out of dark mode and let Dark Reader do it for me.

HN is one of the hardest sites to get right, however. It seems to change every version. My current configuration is: Dynamic, Contrast +20, Grayscale +100. I lose my topcolor, but everything else looks good. (This changed with a recent Dark Reader update. I had everything perfect, but the algorithm changed, and so I compromised on this. A few weeks in, and HN looks normal to me. If I saw the unmodified page, I don't think I'd know which site I was on!)

hawski3• 5 years ago

Good thing about Dark Reader is, that it is available for Firefox for Android.

ackatz• 5 years ago

I use Safari with Adguard and 1Password.

After using Bitwarden for about 2 years, I recently switched to 1Password and it blows Bitwarden out of the water. Far more efficient and easier to use. A bit more expensive though.

karaterobot• 5 years ago

Sponsorblock for Youtube: users mark segments of videos that have sponsored content, and the extension skips over them. It also skips past introductions and interaction reminders.

PikachuEXE• 5 years ago

For desktop users I suggestion trying FreeTube which also has this feature

https://freetubeapp.io/#download

prohobo2• 5 years ago

I kind of object to this because it's directly messing with creators' efforts. Obviously I'm not telling people not to use it, but I think it's worth thinking about the channels/creators you enjoy - especially if they've been demonetized by Youtube.

Glench4• 5 years ago

The extension actually lets you customize the behavior based on the type of video segment. In your case you could configure it to not skip sponsored segments but skip other segments e.g. the non-music parts of music videos.

wildbook• 5 years ago

I'm actually curious about this since I've never uploaded to youtube myself. Do the creators get statistics on segments that are commonly skipped, or is all information like that hidden?

activitypea2• 5 years ago

Youtube already has ads. Yes, Youtube's revenue model is atrocious for creators, but running your own ads on top of their ads is really not the solution. LinusTechTips is the most egregious example of that. After sitting through two Youtube ads, I have to look at their preroll and postroll for sponsorships, as well as a midroll for another sponsor or their merch store. It just gets tiring after a while. I can't imagine how people who pay for Youtube Premium must feel.

thefunnyman• 5 years ago

Don’t most people just spam right arrow to skip through sponsor segments anyway? For me, sponsorblock just automates this process. As others mentioned, it’s pretty granule and has a lot of options for things like intros, intermissions, etc in addition to sponsor segments.

Eugeleo• 5 years ago

I mean, it only messes with the efforts of the advertisers, right? Not that they can detect how many views the sponsored block has. Ofc if this becomes too popular, the ad industry will eventually catch up, but this is long ways away imho.

mrspeaker• 5 years ago

Also "Youtube Video Skip Ad Trigger" is handy one for automatically pressing the "skip ad" button - so you don't have to!

shpx• 5 years ago

If you use uBlock Origin, you shouldn't need it because prevents the ad from playing at all.

Glench4• 5 years ago

+1 to Sponsorblock. It really improves Youtube.

decrypt• 5 years ago

Dark Reader, 1Password, uBlock Origin, Stylus, SpeedUp, CSS Scan, Privacy Redirect, DuckDuckGo Privacy Essentials. These are must-use for me, both in terms of personal life and work.

whitepoplar• 5 years ago

Vimium! (x1000)

keithnz• 5 years ago

Vimium, uBlock Origin, Violent Monkey

rohfle• 5 years ago

uBlacklist by iorate (Firefox / Chrome) - hides google / ddg search results from unwanted domains (medium and pinterest) and highlights others (wikipedia and github)

AHASIC2• 5 years ago

thank god, finally a way to block codegrepper from my searches. fuck that site

johnxie• 5 years ago

uBlock Origin, Stylus, and Dark Reader.

enriquto4• 5 years ago

If you are not into whitelisting you'll hate uMatrix. But uMatrix is great.

npteljes2• 5 years ago

uMatrix is also deprecated.

https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uMatrix-issues/issues/291#is...

enriquto4• 5 years ago

This is really sad. I hope somebody will take on its development!

treenurse3• 5 years ago

I only use extensions with low permissions:

* Twitter to Nitter https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/nitter-redire...

* Remove YouTube Suggestions https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/remove-youtub...

* Reddit to Teddit https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/reddit-to-ted...

I enable:

* strict tracking protection

* privacy.resistFingerprinting

* First party isolation

I'm considering using libreJS.

ajot• 5 years ago

You could replace two of those extensions with Redirector: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/redirector/

treenurse3• 5 years ago

That extension requires permission "Access your data for all websites". I prefer to avoid granting that permission.

detaro• 5 years ago

not mentioned yet: Switch to audible tab - button that jumps through all the tabs that are currently playing audio (optionally also through tabs you have muted). Very helpful for either a) finding the tab with the conf call again or b) quickly finding whatever suddenly makes noise

rektide• 5 years ago

Unmentioned so far:

* Form History Control (rip Lazarus Forms Recovery, Seth plz come back & open source it). https://stephanmahieu.github.io/fhc-home/Manual/manual/

* Multi-Account Containers in Firefox. Absolutely critical to mixing work/personal computing. I used to use profiles to split stuff up but harder to maintain. (oops already mentioned)

* React Developer Tools. Apollo Developer Tools. Instrumental to my development work.

* ViolentMonkey. Before Chrome finally blows up freedom & expression on the web: ViolentMonkey is a pretty good userscripting tool. https://violentmonkey.github.io/

* Open in Sci-hub. I came very close to weaping out loud when I found that these papers I have forever clicked on & wanted are easily within reach. I now have access to humankind's wisdom. https://roiarthurb.github.io/Side-Auto_Sci-Hub/

* Hypothesis. The greatest most pro-web tool humanity has ever imagined, by orders of magnitude. https://web.hypothes.is/start/

* Web Scrobbler. I love knowing what I listened to. Works great with usual suspects. So so results with individual online fm radio stations. https://web-scrobbler.com/

I really want to get good at a vim<->browser extension. Ideally just using a real vim session. I use Dark Reader all the time & it's amazing, just fantastic. I want a replacement for Share-a-holic that I trust, that let's me bookmark/send-to across multiple services (pocket, pinboard primarily); I don't trust share-a-holic. "Switch to audible tab" is useful in critical moments, which thankfully are not often. Extensions I'd like to find & get good at: semantic web extractors/breadcrumbers.

neilparikh• 5 years ago

Unpinterested makes google image search a lot more usable, to the point that I get frustrated whenever I use image search on my phone now.

riffraff• 5 years ago

Calm Twitter: it hides the number of likes and the trending stuff.

This greatly reduces the urge to get into Twitter arguments, and the aggravation the site induces, making it a pleasant pastime rather than a hate-inducing machine.

lanamo• 5 years ago

Dynamo for Safari - slows down videos and lets you skip adds. https://dynamoformac.com Also: Dark Reader https://darkreader.org/safari/

buro9• 5 years ago

NoScript

AHASIC2• 5 years ago

Chrome extensions i use:

adblock plus, google dictionary (just highlight a word and it will define it, or if it isn't an english word it will translate it to english), poper blocker, grammarly, "I don't care about cookies".

_smky4• 5 years ago

adblock plus

i would suggest replacing that one with ublock origin since ABP has a very shady business model that directly interferes with their adblocking

julienpalard• 5 years ago

I also use Pricacy Badger from the EFF.

abhayhegde• 5 years ago

Vimium, uBlock Origin, Twitter to Nitter

dnautics2• 5 years ago

I use cultivate to know country of origin on products I buy, though I am open to better alternatives, if someone knows one

mrweasel2• 5 years ago

Is there a solution of other countries? Cultivate seems to focus on "Made in the US", which is great if you're in the US, but if you're in Europe you might prefer stuff made closer to you.

dnautics2• 5 years ago

exactly (though it does provide general COA) it would be nice for it to be more agnostic

lewisjoe• 5 years ago

https://closetab.email - delivers a digest of your bookmarks to your inbox every monday. Helps me defer content from HN turning into a bunch of unclosed tabs in my browser.

magarnicle• 5 years ago

OneTab. Good for saving tabs, but equally handy for opening a whole bunch of URLs at once.

thmt• 5 years ago

Video Speed Controller lets you speed up any HTML5 video. No more sitting through videos at 1x speed!

Chrome: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/video-speed-contro...

Firefox: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/videospeed/

Even for a site like YouTube that has built-in speed control settings, it's still useful since (1) you can make the speed exceed 2x and (2) you can use keyboard shortcuts to tune the speed easily.

Cilvic2• 5 years ago

Video Speed Controller was an absolute revolution for me. No more switching tabs because the video is too slow.

weedfroglozenge• 5 years ago

Wow thanks! This is exactly what I need thanks to constant phone notifications which have reduced my attention span to.... that of something with a small attention span!

mike_d• 5 years ago

This extension is amazing if you have to do mandatory training videos at work and they speak at a snails pace.

lpapez• 5 years ago

Multiple tabs of videos playing on 4x speed. We did speedrunning contests on these mandatory training videos in my previous company. Good times.

GoblinSlayer• 5 years ago

Can I now has 4x speedup for meetings?

petargyurov• 5 years ago

Sure. You now have time for 4x more meetings! Enjoy!

NylaTheWolf7• 5 years ago

Enhancer for YouTube has a feature like this. Love that extension

ireadfaces• 5 years ago

Not just any videos. Now I even speed up movies on netflix. That's why I have to watch them on laptop now, as I can't speed them up on TV.

selrond• 5 years ago

While I do use video speed controller as well, just for the record - there are shortcuts for video speed manipulation for YouTube:

Speed up the video playback rate. < Slow down the video playback rate.

https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/7631406?hl=en

antifa• 5 years ago

Good to see you can adjust by intervals like 0.10, YouTube's default increments of strictly 0.25 make it impossible to watch most videos at a reasonable pace.

yoaviram• 5 years ago

Opt-out - Send GDPR / CCPA data deletion or access requests to the website you visit.

Chrome: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/opt-out-send-gdpr-...

Firefox: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/android/addon/opt-out/

Disclosure: I'm one of the creators.

kome2• 5 years ago

I will write about Firefox extensions. Firefox is the only browser with some privacy potential. Chrome and Brave are spyware.

* privacy / ads block:

- uBlock Origin

- Decentraleyes (against "free", centralized, content delivery): https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/decentraleyes...

- Disable-javascript (a simple javascript switch) https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/disable-javas...

- Twitter (and Facebook) containers https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/twitter-conta...

* bookmarking / organization:

- Tab Session Manager https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tab-session-m... (to save sessions)

- Stringmark https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/stringmark-hi... (simple bookmark manager, locally stored, that also save snipped of texts and with possibilities of creating separate lists, perfect for academic research)

* to improve navigation

- SponsorBlock https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/sponsorblock/ (it help skipping annoying youtube content within popular videos)

Lordarminius• 5 years ago

...Chrome and Brave are spyware.

I understand Chrome, but Brave ? Care to expatiate ?

kome2• 5 years ago

https://spyware.neocities.org/articles/brave.html

raffraffraff4• 5 years ago

I stopped trying to whitelist sites. Now I just use cookie autodelete and container tabs.

Full list:

- Joplin web clipper

- BitWarden

- Firefox containers

- Containerise (choose tab container based on domain name or url regex)

- Cookie autodelete (in case I ever accidentally log into something in the wrong container, this cleans it up)

I also modify the search bar so it only suggests locations from my bookmarks, and I use separate bookmarks for each account, eg:

- gmail [user@gmail.com]

- gmail [other@work.com]

- aws console [prod@work]

- aws console [me@personal]

- github [work]

- github [personal]

I type "gmail work", hit return and Firefox opens it in the correct container tab, already logged in. (Honestly, who uses bookmarks any more? They just turn into a bloated to-do list, hundreds of links you'll forget about until one day you try them and the domain no longer exists)

Make Google results suck less with Greasemonkey and a script that blocks junk domains (I maintain my own block list). And I have a junk Google account just for random searches etc, and I leave that logged into the "default" container tab, so I'm not plagued by Google cookie / T&C pop-ups.

Other Greasemonkey scripts, eg: make Reddit suck less by using old.reddit.com.

I also log into Firefox and sync this stuff across all of my browsers. Unfortunately the setting per addon do not sync so I always export text configs to a Syncthing directory any time I make a change (eg: update containerise rules, blocklists, cookie autodelete settings)

SahAssar2• 5 years ago

Honestly, who uses bookmarks any more? They just turn into a bloated to-do list, hundreds of links you'll forget about until one day you try them and the domain no longer exists

Use a service like pinboard and they instead turn into a searchable archive of things you like, archived so that they don't disappear/change. Sorta like a curated personal search engine.

ad404b8a372f2b92• 5 years ago

I've always thought it a shame how primitive the history and bookmarks are in Firefox. They don't seem to have evolved at all in 20 years apart from the ability to sync them across devices.

luismartinezs• 5 years ago

What's this pinboard service you mention?

klibertp2• 5 years ago

I want an offline solution for this. What's the point of saving content from the Internet on the same Internet? You lose your connection and immediately lose access to all the saved content.

So, does anyone know of any solution like this, but running locally instead? I tried Recoll, and both the FF extension and the query engine were... unpolished, to say the least...

EDIT: mentioned in another comment Web Clipper + Joplin looks really nice!

jmnicolas2• 5 years ago

(Honestly, who uses bookmarks any more? They just turn into a bloated to-do list, hundreds of links you'll forget about until one day you try them and the domain no longer exists)

I still do but I absolutely agree with you. I'm still looking for a replacement though.

wngr• 5 years ago

Containerise is a must when using containers in FF, it's just so much more ergonomic to use. This should eventually be included within FF.

Macha2• 5 years ago

I type "gmail work", hit return and Firefox opens it in the correct container tab, already logged in. (Honestly, who uses bookmarks any more? They just turn into a bloated to-do list, hundreds of links you'll forget about until one day you try them and the domain no longer exists)

Do you just have a google container, or have you managed to make it so that gmail can only be opened in a "personal" and "work" context and bookmarks open it in the right tab? That's been my big frustration with using container tabs to seperate purposes/accounts like this.

raffraffraff4• 5 years ago

I have containers for personal, projects, shopping and a bunch more. Within work I have several containers (prod, test, dev) as there are different accounts for those - AWS for example

selfhoster114• 5 years ago

Honestly, who uses bookmarks any more? They just turn into a bloated to-do list, hundreds of links you'll forget about until one day you try them and the domain no longer exists

Exactly! I use tabs for that very thing. I have over four hundred tabs open in multiple windows, and counting!

(Please send help.)

Calamitous• 5 years ago

Ha, my co-workers choke every time I share my screen and they see my tabs. Then they learn that they’re just seeing one window out of twelve.

NylaTheWolf7• 5 years ago

oh my god im so glad im not the only one. my ADHD makes this so bad

raffraffraff4• 5 years ago

I have 86 tabs open in Firefox in my phone right now

sergiotapia• 5 years ago

Bitwarden - for passwords

Brave - for adblock built in

Sponsorblock - to cull all the youtube bullshit

Imagus - to hover over images and see the content without having to open a new tab

old reddit redirect - for the occasional google result that takes you to reddit

reddit enhancement suite - to remove all custom css from old reddit

Cilvic2• 5 years ago

If you are on gmail and want to learn more shortcuts try: https://github.com/janmechtel/shortcutsensei

rado• 5 years ago

Hush for Safari (block cookie notices)

cromka2• 5 years ago

Let me quote one of the comments in App Store:

"It’s not clear what this does “ Now browsing without the…”. Without what? The app gives me one sentence of explanation, but it doesn’t fit on the screen. Why would I need to know what it does? I mean, does it say “ok” and accept the cookies on every page? How would I know?"

cromka2• 5 years ago

It's finally explained in FAQ on GitHub: https://github.com/oblador/hush#faq

pvsukale3• 5 years ago

I recently built a browser extension and a web app to keep track of job applications.

  - With the browser extension (for Chrome and Firefox) you can add jobs from any website with a single click and that job will show up on your special Kanban board. 

  - On the board you can add more information and keep track of your application through all the phases. You also get weekly reports with your progress.

If you are looking for a job give it a try :)

Link: https://profilehunt.net/job-application-tracker-web-extensio...

Jedd3• 5 years ago

I have accumulated perhaps more than is healthy.

Some that didn't appear on this page (yet) are:

octotree - intercepts github (and ostensibly other repo site) pages and gives you a browseable file manager pop-out on the left. Once used, it's hard to live without.

behind the overlay - lets you hide (most) popups and overlays with ctrl-shift-x, which regrettably quickly becomes an instinctive reaction

jira assistant - nifty, if you spend a fair bit of time in jira

tabs outliner - can be handy for recovering large bits of your (crashed) browser history, though I find ctrl-shift-T gets me most of the way there these days.

spiralx• 5 years ago

+1 for Octotree and Tabs Outliner from me.

NylaTheWolf7• 5 years ago

I've been trying out Tabs Outliner. It seems exactly like something I'd need, and even works for Vivaldi, but it's a bit overwhelming haha. It's also a shame that the dev disappeared and there's no Firefox extension

Jedd3• 5 years ago

Over the past half dozen years I've found the developer fairly responsive, but we're in a catch-22 situation.

My interest (I want to delete the several hundreds of 'pages' of previous tab details in my history before I'd consider this something I'd pay for) and the developers interest (this is too hard to do for a non-paying customer) have been at odds.

Nezteb• 5 years ago

I used Octotree for a long time but switched to https://github.com/EnixCoda/Gitako because it’s open-source.

Jedd3• 5 years ago

Thank you for the heads-up - I'll install and have a play. I'm not a power user, but it's such a useful tool even in basic explore mode. Ostensibly octotree works with BitBucket (at dayjob) but in practice I've never gotten that working. I note that Gitako has a FR open about 18 months that mentions supporting BB, but doesn't appear to be there yet.

laxmena• 5 years ago

Toby - Bookmark and organize browser tabs

Pocket/Instapaper - To save articles for offline use

Video Speed Controller - Play videos at faster playback speed, time is precious

Send to Kindle - To send articles to Kindle

kartoshechka2• 5 years ago

uBlock - ad blocking

Bitwarden - password manager

Sidebery - a bit nicer Tree Style Tabs

Tridactyl - vim shortcuts

Tab Session Manager - manage multiple sessions of windows and tabs. Back in university I used it to have many "sessions" attached to assignments I'd been doing.

Currently I have "work", "leisure" and "hobby" sessions with a bunch of various project sessions hopefully I'm gonna pick up someday :)

OJFord• 5 years ago

I use Sidebery for something like 'session' management - except all in one window: panels mapped to containers, and container per 'work'/'hobby'/etc.

Quodly• 5 years ago

hacker news enhancement suite

indianmouse• 5 years ago

- uBlock Origin

- Bitwarden

- Imagus

- Session Buddy

- Save Page WE

- Unpaywall

- Bypass paywall clean

- CrxMouse Gestures

- Ghostery

- Firefox Containers

These are across browsers (Firfox/Chrome and Opera)

Occasionally use Brave for some casual browsing.

userhacker• 5 years ago

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/text-to-speech/bkj... has a nice text to speech software, something like what the edge browser has

tgv3• 5 years ago

Another unmentioned one that's handy for web development: Offline QR Code Generator (for Firefox; probably there is one for Chromium as well). It shows a popup with the QR code for current URL, which makes it easy to test the same page on a mobile device.

sofixa• 5 years ago

I think Chrome(probably Chromium as well) do that natively, i've seen a menu option to show a QR code for the current page.

tgv3• 5 years ago

I've never seen it in Chromium (on macos); I don't use Chrome.

koyote• 5 years ago

Firefox has a 'send tab to device' feature if you are signed in.

Really useful!

tgv3• 5 years ago

I'm no fan of Firefox' accounts, so I can't use this, but the extension also allows me to open a website in e.g. Edge Beta on Android.

kzrdude• 5 years ago

AutoTabDiscard, to save memory on many open tabs.

(Firefox addon)

mkl4• 5 years ago

It's good, but unfortunately it can only prevent a URL being suspended for the current session, not whitelist it forever like The Marvellous Suspender (Chrome). This is really annoying when working through an infinite-scroll page like a YouTube channel, which loses its place when it gets suspended.

Cyphase2• 5 years ago

In case you didn't know, and for anyone else, Auto Tab Discard has a permanent whitelist. There's a menu option to add a domain to the whitelist, and you can also add regular expressions. It's also on the preferences page of course.

nikivi• 5 years ago

https://github.com/televator-apps/vimari, https://giorgiocalderolla.com/wipr.html and https://github.com/shumbo/Svadilfari (on iOS)

vanviegen• 5 years ago

- Bitwarden - uBlock origin - Enhancer for Youtube - Joplin Web Clipper - Vimium, but I've configured it to disable vim key bindings, and just use ctrl-space (or ctrl-b for new window) to open a link or focus an input. Here's my Custom key mapping:

  unmapAll
  map <c-space> LinkHints.activateMode
  map <c-b> LinkHints.activateModeToOpenInNewTab

khaled_ismaeel• 5 years ago

I'm surprised none of the top comments mention adblock; most of the article websites I visit (accessed through HN) would not be navigable without an ad blocker.

hawski3• 5 years ago

Because the top text already mentioned uBlock Origin.

throwaway81523• 5 years ago

At the moment, just ublock origin. I think of writing a few special ones of my own, or mayb extending ublock origin. I haven't felt a need for any of the others mentioned here so far. This is in Firefox. I really just hate the web though. I have a few frequently used sites that ublock can't clean up enough, so I read those through special proxies that strip out pretty much everything.

taxyz23• 5 years ago

On Firefox for Keyboarders:

Fast Tab Switcher little used but absolute best Firefox extension for navigating tabs. It shows all tabs for all windows in one drop down accessible by a keyboard shortcut (I use ctrl-q in windows) Tabs are filtered as you type.Tabs can be quickly closed by ctrl-del in drop-down. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/fast-tab-swit...

Vimium-FF Must have for keyboard navigation. Hit escape key and every link on page is navigable by a key sequence. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/vimium-ff/

Web Search Navigator.

Easy keyboard navigation of search results. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/web-search-na...

hawski3• 5 years ago

Simple Tab Groups - https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/simple-tab-gr...

It is what Firefox Tab Group / Panorama should always had been. It makes tab groups backup periodically so you will not loose them. I used this once to move tabs to a different computer, but it's good to know it's there. It also integrates with Tab Containers if you want it.

Jaruzel2• 5 years ago

My de-facto set of extensions:

- uBlock Origin

- Cookie AutoDelete

- "I Don't Care About Cookies" (It auto-OKs cookie consent banners)

- Archive.org's Wayback Machine (A must have in this era of link rot)

Optional:

- Tablist (easily lets me copy out all the URLs of open tabs for 'later')

- User Agent Switcher (Needed less these days, but useful for exploring the DOM of mobile versions of sites)

Additionally, I have written a launcher for Chrome that creates shortcuts for Chrome with the --user-data-dir parameter[1] to enable me to have 100% isolated browser identities. I create and tear these down on regular basis. I started doing this, when I realised that multiple Incognito mode sessions running simultaneously actually share the same cookies and local storage.

---

[1] https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/+/HEAD/docs/u...

ajvs2• 5 years ago

Your custom launcher is basically the manual version of using Multi-Account Containers and Temporary Containers for Firefox by the way.

Jaruzel2• 5 years ago

Oh interesting to know!

selfhoster114• 5 years ago

They do not cover the same use case. If you have 80 tabs each for 3 different topics, you end up managing 240 tabs. It's sometimes more manageable to split this off into entirely different browser profiles (or browsers, even).

vadfa2• 5 years ago

Cookie AutoDelete is a bad choice. The idea of it sounds good, but websites nowadays have lots of APIs to store information in your device, and Cookie AutoDelete doesn't delete all of them, which renders it completely pointless in my opinion.

Eventually what I did was configure my browser so it removes all cookies every time I quit it, which is more or less once a day. Also, I blocked third party cookies.

glidergun• 5 years ago

https://github.com/Cookie-AutoDelete/Cookie-AutoDelete/wiki/...

birksherty• 5 years ago

I make chrome only keep a few whitelisted cookies every time I close and disable 3rd party cookies. I think this system is close to temporary container in Firefox.

I use Edge btw, and it has few great features. There is a collection feature with a toolbar button. It can saves all the opened tabs for later use, no memory hogging and need to use 3rd party extension. Few other toolbar buttons which provides faster experience than chrome.

fariss• 5 years ago

You can check out Tab Stash. It is a great add on to stash your tabs for later use.

KayL• 5 years ago

uBlock has a cookie list for consent banners

aembleton2• 5 years ago

I don't care about cookies also publishes one that can be used by uBlock - https://www.i-dont-care-about-cookies.eu/abp/

_smky4• 5 years ago

sadly this breaks a few sites since it doesnt auto accept cookies but rather hides the banner as far as i know

utucuro• 5 years ago

Used to use Archive.org's own extension, but I encountered way too many false positives over time to continue using it. I'd recommend One-click Wayback instead - no automatic activation.

chrismeller• 5 years ago

Thanks so much for that. I had the same problem and got so infuriated with their extension that I couldn’t continue to use it. A cursory search didn’t turn up anything that seemed polished or reputable, so nice to finally find a recommended alternative.

naturalauction• 5 years ago

You can switch user agents in chrome developer tools now - no need for an extension [1]. I find device mode [2] even better for your use case.

[1] https://developer.chrome.com/docs/devtools/device-mode/overr...

[2] https://developer.chrome.com/docs/devtools/device-mode/

eastendguy• 5 years ago

I have almost the same list, plus I recommend a web browser macro recorder like imacros, uivision or selenium ide.

Which one you prefer depends on your taste. They are great for casual and quick form filling and testing, and save me from too much typing and clicking.

avtolik• 5 years ago

I use a fairly standard suite of addons for Firefox, mainly for privacy and tab management:

NoScript, uBlock Origin, Multi-Account Containers, Skip Redirect, Neat URL, Tabhunter, MoveTab, Foxy Gestures, Stylus

knbknb• 5 years ago

Edgar Dijkstra's 1988 Paper "On the Cruelty of Really Teaching Computer Science"

It's just a paper, but still I'd recommend it, because it was highly influential. It was indeed so influential that it has its own Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Cruelty_of_Really_Teach...

In the paper he argues that

- the computer industy has been progressing with exponential growth 1948-1988,

- will continue to do so for decades (he was right in that)

- this rate of progress is unprecedented, and the human brain is unfit to deal with such growth, thus

- the only way to deal with such enormous mount of power is: Mathematics, because proofs are rigorous. (I'm simplifying a bit here.)

m4lvin• 5 years ago

Okay, but how do I get Edsger(!) Dijkstra as a Firefox add-on? ;-)

ronyfadel• 5 years ago

wrong thread?

pmlnr2• 5 years ago

* ublock origin - doesn't need introduction

* forget me not - cleans cookies

* stylus - some sites are too bright

* clearURLs - remove tracking from urls

* I don't care about cookies - also gets rid a lot of popup annoyances

* skip redirect - avoid going through 3rd party to get to a link

* redirector - redirect sites to nitter, teddit, bibliogram, etc

I also use firefox containers.

_smky4• 5 years ago

redirector

seems to be out of date. a more up to date version would be "privacy redirect".

pmlnr2• 5 years ago

No, those two are not the same thing. Redirector can redirect anything based on regex, privacy redirect is for fixed services at the moment.

ioulian• 5 years ago

* SponsorBlock for YouTube - Skip Sponsorships

jcun41282• 5 years ago

Every time I setup a new computer/OS I always put Ublock and adblock plus (yes I use both)

Also have my own extensions, in particular one that dumps all the active tab titles with urls for future lookup and a YT one that hides the homepage crap so I don't get distracted whenever I go on there to do something.

gorhill2• 5 years ago

Using another ad blocker along uBO leads to worse results than using uBO alone, I keep warning people about this, see <https://twitter.com/gorhill/status/1033706103782170625>.

jcun41282• 5 years ago

My experience has been fine, is possible memory performance the main concern? I have been pretty happy with the ad blocking performance itself, seems to be working right.

edit: I did check out your GitHub I see now why what you're saying has weight, okay I will go with just UBO.

squarefoot2• 5 years ago

My list:

The essential one: Ublock Origin of course; surfing the web without it is next to impossible today.

-A bit less essential but very helpful:

HTTPS Everywhere: forces the browser to connect to secure pages anyway.

Privacy Badger: by the EFF. Blocks trackers.

uMatrix: NoScript on steroids. Allows to turn off parts of the web page with deep granularity (filter by domain and type of data). Needs "training", not for new users, don't install on granma's PC.

Duck Duck Go Privacy Essentials: Blocks trackers and other things.

-Then among the useful albeit not essential:

DownThemAll: to quickly download files (docs, images, pdfs etc) from sites.

FeedBro: Feed reader. Featureful RSS, Atom, RDF Reader.

Nitter Redirect: Redirects automatically Twitter links to Nitter, a Twitter front end that respects the users privacy.

Redirect AMP to HTML: Redirects Google AMP pages to their original ones.

Bypass Paywalls: to bypass many news sites paywalls.

StartPage.com: Redirects searches to StartPage.com, which essentially is to Google what DuckDuckGo is to Bing.

Livemarks: Restores RSS live bookmark support on Firefox after it was removed from Mozilla.

Search By Image: a reverse image search addon which supports various search engines.

ajvs2• 5 years ago

Privacy Badger is unnecessary, it's a worse version of uBlock.

Also HTTPS Everywhere can be replaced with the Force HTTPS option natively implemented in Firefox.

AkshitGarg• 5 years ago

Not only firefox, but edge, chrome and safari too. EFF is deprecating HTTPS everywhere. See https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/09/https-actually-everywh...

ragnese• 5 years ago

I'm going to cry bitter tears when uMatrix eventually stops working on newer versions.

000000• 5 years ago

My list: - uBlock Origin - Bitwarden - Never-Consent - Decentraleyes - Privacy Badger - HTTPS Everywhere - clearURLs - Enhancer for YouTube - Twitter to Nitter

nathias• 5 years ago

  Enhanced Firefox UX:
  - Vimium
  - Tree Style Tab
  - Dark Reader
  - Last Pass
  - Bypass Pywalls
  - Sponsor Block

  Privacy:
  - Ublock Origin
  - Privacy Badger

  Dev:
  - Wappalyzer
  - What Font
  - WAVE

  Web3:
  - Metamask
  - Phantom
  (adding more)

  Other:
  - Scrobbler for last.fm

lemonade5117• 5 years ago

I think OP is asking for privacy related extensions but here’s a fun one that I use: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/nicolas-cage/fjgbn...

It replaces every instance of “god” on your current web page with “Nicolas Cage.” Gets me every time.

superleo2020• 5 years ago

I don't understand this. Why would you replace Nicolas Cage with Nicolas Cage?

robotmay• 5 years ago

Sounds like the plot for Face/Off sequel where Nicolas Cage swaps his face with himself, Nicolas Cage.

SamuelAdams• 5 years ago

Reminds me of cloud to butt.

https://github.com/panicsteve/cloud-to-butt

benttoothpaste• 5 years ago

I don’t understand this. Why would you replace butt with butt?

jasonpeacock• 5 years ago

Because there's no way that could ever go wrong...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28869819

jacek• 5 years ago

These are not that well known, but I highly recommend them (Firefox):

* Bypass Paywalls Clean - the name says it all - https://gitlab.com/magnolia1234/bypass-paywalls-firefox-clea...

* Web Archives - easy access to cached websites, also useful for paywalls and sites heavy in JS - https://github.com/dessant/web-archives

* Vimium - use keyboard for browsing - https://github.com/philc/vimium

* SponsorBlock for YouTube - skip in-video ads - https://sponsor.ajay.app/

* Old Reddit Redirect - use old reddit design - https://github.com/tom-james-watson/old-reddit-redirect

* Reddit Enhancement Suite - https://redditenhancementsuite.com/

aigo2• 5 years ago

How does 'bypass paywalls clean' differ from the 'original' one by github.com/iamadamdev?

cheeaun• 5 years ago

Don't see this mentioned here but recently I've been using this a lot: Kill-Sticky - Remove all elements with fixed or sticky positions https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/kill-sticky/lekjlg...

habibur• 5 years ago

- Javascript switcher

- YouTube in-video ad remover

I have only the above two active.

kulikalov• 5 years ago

Why not just pay a few bucks for YouTube premium to get rid of the ad? I’m not judging, just genuinely curious. I’m hesitant to invest in YouTube ads for my project, because I assume that majority of high worth customers pay for the premium and would not see my ads.

james-redwood2• 5 years ago

I'm surprised no one here has mentioned OneTab

https://www.one-tab.com/

With a click of a button, it throws all of your current tabs open into a single page (via hyperlinks), from which you have a lot of capability on what to do with them (open, open selected, bookmark, delete, etc)

ihateolives• 5 years ago

Does it survive browser closing and reopening?

edanm• 5 years ago

Yes.

james-redwood2• 5 years ago

Yes it does. You can even sync it across devices I think

nottorp• 5 years ago

Everyone seems to mention privacy extensions. I'd also add some tab suspender extension to the list to save ram/cpu, especially on battery.

npteljes2• 5 years ago

My repertoire in Firefox: uBlock Origin, Multi-Account Containers, Temporary Containers, SponsorBlock, Decentraleyes.

Normille• 5 years ago

All the usual suspects named previously: uBlock Origin, Bitwarden, ViolentMonkey, Vimium, etc. Plus:

* Buster Captcha Solver --Poetic justice in browser extension form! Uses Google's speech recognition software against Google's ReCaptcha to solve the captchas, This browser extension more than any other has probably saved me from going on a killing rampage against whoever invented ReCaptcha

https://github.com/dessant/buster

* Typio Form Recovery --Fantastic extension that allows you to recover the data you've just typed into a browser web form and which has been lost through browser crashing / page reloading / etc. Has saved me tearing what's left of my hair out on many occasions:

https://typiorecovery.github.io/

* Shift Click --As the name suggests. Shift+Click on any image on a webpage and it will open the image in a new tab. Great for quickly getting the full-size version of images on web pages and more useful than it sounds, as it saves opening the browsers dev tools pane and source code diving. I use it all the time on eBay to inspect full size images of items I'm looking at and which eBay will only display at a certain size:

https://shft.cl

* Country Flag & Whois --not exactly a necessity, but a fun extension anyway. Gives you a wee flag at the side of your address bar, showing you which country the server of the site you're visiting is hosted in. On a more practical note, you can click the flag to view the Whois info for that domain:

https://add0n.com/country-flags.html

* Asccidoctor.js Live Preview --A while back I started using AsciiDoc for all my text composing needs, after finding the limitations and ever-multiplying variants of MarkDown increasingly annoying. Unfortunately, while many text editors come with Markdown preview capabilities, I've yet to find one that can do AsciiDoc previews. So that's where this extension comes in. I open my AscciDoc files in my browser and this extension automatically generates a preview, which I can then 'print to PDF' to have a nicely formatted document created using AsciiDoc:

https://github.com/asciidoctor/asciidoctor-browser-extension

* Stylebot --Inject custom CSS into any webpage. I use it on a couple of sites to fix annoying browser rendering quirks or remove irritating content [with display:none;].

https://stylebot.dev

* FireNvim --a nice accompaniment to Vimium. This extension turns text entry windows in web forms into NeoVim edit bufffers, allowing you to edit text using an embedded NeoVim instance. I don't actually use this as much as I thought I might, as I nearly always forget I have it installed:

https://github.com/glacambre/firenvim

These last two aren't browser extensions as such. But I can't imagine using my browser without these. So I think they deserve an honourable mention:

* Pinboard bookmarklet --I use Pinboard to save all my bookmarks. So they're accessible across all my browsers and all my devices. I have the Pinboard bookmarklet on the browser address bar on my desktop machines [and use the 'Share' menu on Android] to quickly bookmark pages from wherever I'm browsing.

* Telegram --One step down from permanent bookmarking via Pinboard, I use Telegram as my messenger app and avail of this facility all the time on Android to quickly stash links I want to take a look at later on a 'proper' computer --either to view on a larger screen, or because [as with this post] I want to compose a reply, without wrestling with a crappy touchscreen keyboard. Telegram has a 'Saved Messages' chat. So, on an Android device, I hit the 'Share' icon beside the URL on a page I want to save for later and then in the Share window that pops up, I send the URL to Telegram 'Saved Messages' where I can grab it later, when I'm on a real computer.

For anyone using Yandex Mail; Yandex also have a Telegram Bot which provides a similar function but also emails you the link as well. I used to use this til I realised the emails where pretty superfluous and just started sending links to my Telegram 'Saved Messages' instead:

https://t.me/YandexMail360_bot

EDIT: A couple more I found in my browser's preferences but which I forgot about because you don't directly interact with them:

* Redirect AMP to HTML --as the name suggests, tells servers you want to be served up the HTML version of a page rather than the AMP version because... fuck Google, basically.

https://www.daniel.priv.no/web-extensions/amp2html.html

* Nimbus Screenshot --Comes in handy sometimes when you want to grab a screenshot of part of a webpage which is too big to fit in the browser window without scrolling. Nimbus Screenshot has various capturing modes including 'Select and Scroll' which allows you to do this.

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/nimbus-screenshot-...

* Chrome Extension Source Viewer --Allows you to download Chrome extensions as CRX files from the Chrome Webstore. Thus allowing you to manually install them on browsers which refuse to install them directly. I've used this to successfully install a couple of Chrome extensions on Yandex Browser in Android, which the browser refused to install, telling me they were incompatible.

https://github.com/Rob--W/crxviewer

TheWellKnownEIP• 5 years ago

To add to the list of great extensions mentioned here:

- News Feed Eradicator

Inspired from "Indistractible" by Nir Eyal, I found it very useful in removing unnecessary visual noise and distractions when I check my messages on Facebook.

jcmontx• 5 years ago

Ublock origin, Mercury Reader

dulus21• 5 years ago

To be fair, when I needed to use Edge for work I only searched for three out of four extensions I have on personal Firefox:

1) - uBlock Origin

2) - Hover Zoom+

3) - Limit Tabs

Couldn't find the last one, or something similar at least. There is one extra addon which I don't need on my work computer, but use it on Firefox personal computer:

Update Scanner (you can scan webpages for changes, or use it like an RSS feed)

LE: i think i will increase the list after reading this thread, HTML5 playback speed does sound usefull.

zczc• 5 years ago

Firefox extensions:

- uBlock Origin

- Firefox Multi-Account Containers

- Tree Style Tab

- Context Search Origin - Allows searching from bookmarked search providers, killer feature is "Search All in Tabs" option which opens a tab for every provider in bookmark folder

- FoxyProxy - I've defined rules for blocked sites to open in Tor, much more usable than using Onion Browser, though less privacy

Jaxtek• 5 years ago

I use Chrome

Cookie AutoDelete

uBlock

Dark Mode

LastPass

SiteBlocker (Blocks certain URLs / sites from being visited.I use it to block URLs (articles ,etc) I found useless so that I don't have to read them again)

Channel Blocker ( removes videos of certain channels from YouTube - I use it to block certain channels that are clickbait but top the YouTube results)

Bypass Paywall

Nimbus Screenshot

Clear NewTab

y7• 5 years ago

Firefox Multi-Account Containers and Temporary Containers are an ideal combo. By default, every tab opens in a new temporary container. You can create named containers for (groups of) sites you frequently visit so you don't have to login each time. It's a bit hard to find: to pin a site to a container, visit it and then click the Multi-Account Container icon in the toolbar -> Always Open This Site In...

drumhead• 5 years ago

uBlock Origin and NoScript are my essentials, those two can take care of most things.

_wycp• 5 years ago

For Chrome:

* Authy (2FA)

* Rofocus [1] - productivity extension that's free and gets me into flow (ambient music + pomodoro timers)

* Loom - moved almost 100% to asynchronous 'meetings' and I regularly record tutorials for documentation purposes

[1] https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/rofocus-increase-y...

Rayan_NM• 5 years ago

I have a shitload of free and useful extensions I use often (Chrome):

ORGANIZATION:

- SimpleExtManager "A simple menu to enable, disable and access options of extensions". This allows me to have a zillion extensions and not be all active all the time.

- OneTab "Save up to 95% memory and reduce tab clutter". I use that to not have 30 tabs open when I'm researching a given subject. They're all saved as neatly organised links. It's super useful to quickly share a group of tabs (links) to a friend.

- Raindrop.io "All-in-one bookmark manager". Prettiest and most useful bookmark manager, automatically takes thumbnails, tags and meta info from a website. They also have desktop and mobile apps so all my bookmarks are super available. It's my default window when I open a new tab.

- Save to Notion "Save links to your Notion databases". For saving website pages as part of a given workflow because Notion is where I manage my work (freelance & indie projects). You can save pages in templated formats, it's really neat.

Basically I use OneTab for saving, reopening and sharing groups of tabs of a given work session, I use Raindrop for saving bookmarks of my favourite websites (dev & design tools for example), and I use Save to Notion to save pages as part of a project workflow (landing page of a potential partner for a project or linkedin profile of a potential client).

- 1Password That's just my password manager. I think it works great, on all devices.

----

CONVENIENCE:

- Google Translate "View translations easily as you browse the web. By the Google Translate team." I translate stuff often, English isn't my native language.

- I don't care about cookies Auto-removes cookie banners and auto-accepts them if it's the only way to remove the banners.

- uBlock Origin "Finally, an efficient blocker. Easy on CPU and memory". I think everybody already has that haha.

- Dark Reader "Dark mode for every website. Take care of your eyes, use dark theme for night and daily browsing." So my girlfriend doesn't kill me when I open super bright tabs at 2am in bed.

---

DECONSTRUCTING PRODUCTS (to learn how to build them)

- Wayback Machine "Reduce annoying 404 pages by automatically checking for an archived copy in the Wayback Machine." I love seeing how some websites evolved over time to learn about their owners' decisions.

- CSS Peeper "Extract CSS and build beautiful styleguides." Getting color HEX codes from existing websites or deconstructing how they set up their paddings, margins etc is always neat.

- Wappalyzer "Identify web technologies". I like to use it to see if something is built in no-code with a webflow CMS for example. But you really see everything someone's used to build a website. I've tried multiple tools like this one and I think this is the simplest one to understand. Builtwith has too much info to my taste.

Then there's a few other extensions that I'm trying now but I'm not sure I'll keep so I won't recommend them yet. Mostly work-related for specific tools I use.

tugberkk• 5 years ago

In addition to previously mentioned, I also download tampermonkey. I can make use of several websites by fiddling with js code.

anotheryou• 5 years ago

All firefox:

---

Must have:

- uBlock Origin

---

Must have for me:

- I wrote a "mark seen" add-on for HN (and a few other sites). And I'm the only user :): https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/seen-it-all/

- ScrollAnywhere (drag right click to scroll; if I wasn't using this I'd have rocker gestures instead, also nice but incompatible with my setup :) )

- SponsorBlock (in-video adblock working for bigger youtube channels)

- Dark Reader (best global dark mode)

- Some password manager

- Sidebery (tabs in sidebar. slickest app, but sometimes a bit bugged...)

---

Nice to haves:

- Tapermonkey for userscripts (js injection)

- Stylish for custom CSS

- Saka Key (non-intrusive keyboard shortcuts for everything in the browser)

- Textarea Cache (form did not submit or you accidentally closed the tab before sending? This is the rescue)

- Auto Tab Discard (If I opened way too many tabs)

- Translate Web Pages (most like the chrome version)

- Open in PDF Reader (I like sumatra over the js in browser one)

alfiedotwtf• 5 years ago

Anyone else not use browser extensions for various reasons?

mrweasel2• 5 years ago

I do use a browser extensions, but nearly to the extend others apparently do.

For both Firefox and Safari I use exactly two extensions: Duck Duck Go Privacy Essentials and Lastpass. I don't really see the point in maintaining a long list of extensions or try to customize the browser. Long term I believe it's easier to just learn to use and accept the browser as is.

loufe• 5 years ago

I've seen all of my used addons recommended by others but here's what hits it for me:

-SponsorBlock (incredible boost to Youtube tolerability)

-uBlock Origin (created and maintained by a Québecois!)

--Don't forget to addd annoyances and malware lists to configuration!

-Refined hacker news (small nice changes for the site).

-cookies auto-delete.

plibither8• 5 years ago

Refined Hacker News [0] author here, thanks for the mention :)

[0] https://github.com/plibither8/refined-hacker-news

jlkuester7• 5 years ago

Another happy user checking in. Thanks for the plugin!

DavideNL• 5 years ago

An iPad extension would be cool too :)

(like Refined Github https://github.com/refined-github/refined-github#install)

aigo2• 5 years ago

The web is now completely unusable without uBlock Origin and I Don't Care About Cookies. I honestly don't know how people go about their day without these things, especially on mobile.

timdaub• 5 years ago

- adnauseam

- Facebook Container

swissfunicular• 5 years ago

Privacy

- uBlock Origin (block ads and trackers)

- Decentraleyes (locally emulate CDN)

- Privacy Badger (from EFF)

- AdNauseam (in conjunction with uBlock)

- Canvas Blocker (Fingerprint Protect)

- Privacy Redirects (redirect social media sites to their privacy friendly front ens, eg twitter --> nitter)

Other Privacy tools - Tracking Token Stripper (removes tracking part from URL)

- minerBlock (blocks miners from using your CPU for cryptos)

- WebRTC Leak Prevent

- Location Guard (spoof location, not very effective)

- Agentium (User Agent Switcher)

From Google - Google Analytics Opt-out Add-on

- IBA Opt-out

Convenience - Password Manager (I use Bitwarden)

- Dark Reader

- Save Webpages Offline As MHTML (saves as single file)

Not an extension

- In-built DNS-over-HTTPS (I use BlahDNS/NextDNS as additional layer for adblocking and privacy)

genidoi• 5 years ago

FakeSpot - filters out amazon / ebay search results that have high rates of fake reviews

kilroy123• 5 years ago

Here is my list:

- uBlock Origin (blocks ads)

- Privacy Badger (blocks trackers and what not)

- I don't care about cookies (I'm in Europe where it's cookie banner hell)

- 1pass or lastpass (password manger)

- SponsorBlock for YouTube (skip YouTube promotion sections)

- Bypass Paywalls Clean (skip the payways on many different sites)

timbit42• 5 years ago

Europe has caused cookie banner hell globally. It's not just in Europe.

Helmut10001• 5 years ago

I don't Care About Cookies and Privacy Redirect, ideally with a self hosted Invidious instance (and Nitter etc.).

penjelly2• 5 years ago

brave browser, brave search

- vimium for keyboard browser control

- darkreader makes all sites dark

- ublock origin

- tab redirect, force new tabs to hit a page i specified

- password manager

- instapaper, clips webpages/links for later

hank_z• 5 years ago

Just curious - have you tried Surfingkeys (an alternative to vimium)?

penjelly2• 5 years ago

I've not. I'll give it a look thanks

luke2m• 5 years ago

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/bypass-paywal...

sf_rob• 5 years ago

* Stylus - super useful. I auto color my dev/qa/prod environments so I don't do anything stupid. I color code the stocks in my brokerage account by strategy. I fix some of the terrible pastel colors in Microsoft products.

* Tab ReTitle+ - useful when you have multiple tabs open with identical titles.

* Zoom Tab auto-close+ - Closes Zoom tabs once opened.

* ColorZilla - A quick color-picker. I do some light web-dev and it's marginally more convenient than inspecting.

* Firefox Color - Quick browser changes, also do some custom stuff in UserChrome.css

* History Cleaner - Deletes my history after x weeks.

* LastPass - Just what I thought was best in 2016, not sure what's best these days but I'm somewhat satisfied

I find Firefox's built-in tracker blockers adequate for my usage these days (used to use uBlock Origin). Also, Firefox containers is a game changer for isolating work/personal or dev/qa.

I would also recommend learning how to write/use Bookmarklets and edit UserChrome.css for greater productivity/customization.

[+]Some of the above are not large enough to be audited by Mozilla, but the source code is on Github.

gaws3• 5 years ago

LastPass - Just what I thought was best in 2016, not sure what's best these days but I'm somewhat satisfied

1Password

aikinai• 5 years ago

For iOS Safari (both iPad and iPhone) I recently found StopTheMadness which is amazing.

It’s. grabbag of great features and make iOS browsing more like a desktop. Let you get the context menu for any image, show native video controls, stop sites from blocking right click or paste, etc.

2-718-281-828• 5 years ago

My Firefox extensions:

- Vimium

- uBlock Origin

- Clickbait Remover for Youtube

- Enhancer for Youtube

- Exif Viewer

- ClearURLs (have to disable it, though, most of the time as it breaks sites)

HonestIsNow• 5 years ago

We would humbly suggest you to try https://www.honest.is/

revorad• 5 years ago

I love Momentum Dash - https://momentumdash.com

And Control Space - https://controlspace.app

instagraham2• 5 years ago

OneTab UBlock Origin No Coin

instagraham2• 5 years ago

Wanted to post a complete list. But have also considered that your browser extensions really do help in making your digital fingerprint unique. This thread is a doxxers (not quite gold but perhaps bronze) mine, perhaps.

gaws3• 5 years ago

This thread is a doxxers (not quite gold but perhaps bronze) mine, perhaps.

Please elaborate.

Glench4• 5 years ago

Lots of good extensions in this thread.

Here are some optional extensions I like:

- Twemex - https://twemex.app/ - Adds a really useful sidebar to Twitter.

- Recipe Filter - https://github.com/sean-public/RecipeFilter - Focuses recipes front and center on food blogs

- Notion Boost - https://gourav.io/notion-boost - Adds a lot of really nice features to Notion

- Tampermonkey - https://www.tampermonkey.net/ - Lets you create your own JS customizations on web pages without needing to make a whole browser extension.

I really wish it was far easier for everyday people to make their own personal browser extension-like functionality and share it with others. Extending the apps we use feels really empowering and can help people transition from helpless consumers of apps to authors of how their computer works. Here's an essay I like detailing this view:

https://www.geoffreylitt.com/2019/07/29/browser-extensions.h...

And while I'm here I'd also like to plug a service I wrote that lets you easily add paid features to extensions you develop:

https://extensionpay.com

I made it to use myself but lots of developers have found it useful in monetizing their extensions without ads or selling user data. And even to my surprise, users are actually willing to pay for browser extensions! The service has made devs over $13k since I launched earlier this year!

fancy_pantser• 5 years ago

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/recipe-filter/ahlc...

I made the recipe-filter extension you mentioned, which has the source available on GitHub at the link you gave and thus is trivial for others to fork, modify, install locally, and so on. All extensions wind up as an archive with JS that one could modify, but I've made this one especially transparent.

With your ExtensionPay, I could add a check to see if someone has a subscription for some new features I'm working on, but it feels like something's missing checking in that code into a public repo with no server necessary for the processing the extension requires. The trust is handled in the JS running on the users' browsers.

As Mozilla recommends, it's better to focus on making a good product for the majority of users that won't hack your extension.

It's fairly popular (a bit over 58K active users) and someone already forked+modified the extension for another browser. It seems like if I charge some amount for the new features, it would be trivial for someone to fork it, remove the subscription check, and distribute it as a new extension. Similarly, they could add their own payment system and charge for the clone by changing just a few lines.

As it stands, giving it away for free means there's nothing at stake. Adding a payment check in plain JS feels like it would generally work but incentivizes other putting in the time to crack it or clone it for profit and there's no great way back from that point.

Glench4• 5 years ago

Well, your extension has 50k+ users. What percentage do you think would try to get around the payment system? I'm guessing most of your users aren't that technical, they just hate those recipe card things :) And how many users does the next most popular fork of your extension have?

Notion Boost is also an open-source extension on Github with 20k+ users and has made a bunch of money from users paying for pro features. So there's at least one data point in your favor.

I'd also like to point out that you're speculating! You don't know what will happen :) One reason I made ExtensionPay was so that developers (including me!) can just try monetizing their extensions with no costs and very little time commitment and see what happens empirically — get the data.

How were you thinking about monetizing your extension anyway? Subscriptions? One-time? Freemium?

gorhill2• 5 years ago

Kind of annoying having to whitelist every website I visit on NoScript these days but worth it imho

In case you didn't already know, uBO does integrate a script blocker, with the advantage over NoScript that it supports per-site rules. I wrote a Twitter thread about this as an introduction a while ago: <https://twitter.com/gorhill/status/1379819815657996290>.

Also, a negative interference when using another script blocker extension along uBO is that these can prevent uBO from redirecting blocked resources to local neutered ones[1], beside making managing rules more complicated since the ruleset of two extensions have to be investigated when trying to unbreak a site.

* * *

[1] Redirecting to neutered local resources is useful to prevent site breakage and also to defuse anti-content blocker mechanisms.

fodmap• 5 years ago

I just want to say thank you for your amazing work.

skrowl• 5 years ago

uBlock origin in "Medium mode" does most of what you're hoping to get out of NoScript. Enabling it is basically just turning on advanced mode and setting 2 rules to block 3rd party scripts and rules - https://github.com/gorhill/ublock/wiki/Blocking-mode:-medium...

I combo it with Decentraleyes to get rid of most CDN (tracking) traffic.

runjake• 5 years ago

Thanks for all your work and troubles over the years.

joshxyz• 5 years ago

I wanna thank you for blocking ads on each newssite pornsite and pirate movie site i visited, uBlock Origin is a gift that keeps on giving haha.

akoster• 5 years ago

Export Tabs URLs

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/export-tabs-u...

Used to dump tab URLs into a text file for later use. Has the option of selecting and editing the text of the file before saving, filtering the file contents, only selecting tabs from the current window in Firefox, and adding the title of each tab above its URL.

folmar2• 5 years ago

Tab Session Manager will export tabs and much more (but the export is json).

hagbard_c• 5 years ago

The line of defence - for that is what most extensions are used for - actually starts much earlier, in the router. Using iptables and ipset it blocks known nefarious network ranges. On that same router lives the DNS proxy which, fed using the same filter lists as used by blocking extensions, relegates unwanted domain names to a local address which serves nothing. Once past the router there are a few application proxies which take care of search (using the Searx meta-search engine, replies are proxied), Youtube (proxied through invidious), Twitter (proxied through nitter) and Reddit (libreddit - hardly ever used here). Then, on browsers:

- uBlock Origin blocks unwanted content

- Privacy Redirect redirects Youtube, Twitter and Reddit to the aforementioned local proxies

- Containers with Transitions (a forked version of Multi-Account Containers) is used to separate a number of well-known data-hoarding services (e.g. anything owned by AlphabetGoogle, anything owned by FaceMetaBook) by owner

- SwitchyOmega is used to choose one of several Tor instances in case I need to appear to come from a different IP address.

- IPFS Companion makes it easier to access ipfs:// and ipns:// links

- Open With to open links in other tools - this can be anything you like, I'm e.g. using this to mirror material likely to be censured, feed magnet: links to the server-resident Transmission daemon, command the local netcast (which is also called 'podcast') instance to create audio-only versions of material I want to listen to while working outside, etc.

All these are used on Firefox on Linux, some on Firefox on Android. I hardly ever use Chromium but for those times I do I have most of them installed there as well except for Containers with Transitions which is Firefox-only.

pabs32• 5 years ago

There is one extension that doesn't exist yet but I want: The right solution to using the modern web is an allow-list based approach. Let the user be in control of the details of every request and response and action taken by the browser. Then people who want to can choose their own way to interact with the web.

aembleton2• 5 years ago

Sounds like uMatrix

pabs32• 5 years ago

uMatrix can be configured similarly, but it is extremely limited. I am thinking something more like the Firefox/Chrome DevTools.

Also uMatrix is no longer maintained.

spookyuser2• 5 years ago

Okay one I haven't seen mentioned that I have been using a lot: Chrome Currency Converter, you can have it configured that when you press a shortcut all currencies on a page are converted to your local one. For me, when I press Alt-c the whole page changes from $ to my currency

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/chrome-currency-co...

cloogshicer2• 5 years ago

I wish something like this existed but with time zones.

For example, any time a website mentions "Tuesday 10AM PST", I want to be able to hover over it to reveal the time/date in my own timezone.

Have looked but couldn't really find anything.

spookyuser2• 5 years ago

That's a great idea! I never knew i wanted this until now!

Edit: Just found this: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/time-zone-converte... seems to work great not hover but right click and select

silverlake• 5 years ago

Shutup removes comments from sites. It’s made the web much more pleasant.

_smky4• 5 years ago

sadly this doesnt seem to work on sites outside the US(?). I've tried it on spiegel.de and still see comments.

ilian• 5 years ago

For saving web pages, parts of them or bookmarks as plain files, I can recommend the TagSpaces Web Clipper https://www.tagspaces.org/products/webclipper/

abrowne• 5 years ago

Stylus!

pjmlp• 5 years ago

None, I don't use any extensions.

ntc20083• 5 years ago

I recommend Vimium C and Ublock Origin.

ntc20083• 5 years ago

And Ncage lol

ntc20083• 5 years ago

Vimium C

shaicoleman• 5 years ago

Here are a few Chrome extensions you can check out:

* Improve YouTube! - https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/improve-youtube-vi...

* Reader Mode - https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/reader-mode/llimhh...

* Google Images Restored - https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/google-images-rest...

* Intention - Stop Mindless Browsing - https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/intention-stop-min...

* Video Speed Controller - https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/video-speed-contro...

* New Tab Changer - https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/new-tab-changer/oc...

* JSON Lite - https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/json-lite/acacmjci...

* streamkeys - https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/streamkeys/ekpipjo...

* AutoFormer+ - https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/autoformer%20/cjef...

* Pushbullet - https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/pushbullet/chlffgp...

* AutoScroll - https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/autoscroll/occjjkg...

* No Mouse Wheel Zoom - https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/no-mouse-wheel-zoo...

thomcano• 5 years ago

I think uBlock Origin is definitely a must-have as a browser extension.

webwanderings• 5 years ago

Winger has been a great productivity booster. No relationship. Just a happy user. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/winger/

servytor• 5 years ago

I recommend Falcon[0][1], I wish Firefox had an equivalent. It basically does full-text search of any website visited. I discovered it via HN[2].

[0] https://github.com/lengstrom/falcon [1]: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/falcon/mmifbbohghe... [2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12479977

Havelock• 5 years ago

- uBlock Origin - tabmanager.io - React Developer Tools

jslakro• 5 years ago

I use and recommend Session Buddy. I don't agree with all the ad blockers extensions because of course ads are annoying, but a big part of the content in the internet would not be available without them

SAI_Peregrinus3• 5 years ago

uBlock Origin, Firefox Multi-Account Containers, Temporary Containers, Containerise, and Tree Style Tabs for me. I also quite like Tab Session Manager, and get a decent amount of use out of QR Code Generator.

uBlock Origin is an ad blocker, and script blocker, with per-site rules. I use it in "Advanced User" mode.

Multi-Account Containers allows isolating sites to containers, all cookies, local storage, etc, are kept within that container only (but all addons work across all containers). So my HN container saves my HN login, my Stackexchange container saves my stackexchange login, etc.

Temporary containers makes sites that aren't assigned to a permanent container get assigned to a temporary container that gets deleted shortly after they're closed. So anything that doesn't have a permanent assignment gets something akin to a Private Browsing tab.

Containerize allows wildcard matching for domains to permanent containers. So sites with logins that have a bunch of subdomains & redirects can match all of them to the same container. EG *.jetbrains.com opens in a container for Jetbrains, so their redirect-to-login flow works.

Tree-style tabs provides better organization of things I'm working on than flat tabs without a hierarchy.

Tab Session Manager lets me save and load entire sessions of tabs at once, or just single windows from a session, and give those sessions names.

QR Code Generator is handy for exactly what the name says.

blindmute• 5 years ago

How is this container strategy different from just disabling third-party cookies?

SAI_Peregrinus3• 5 years ago

Containers isolate more than just cookies, they isolate all local storage. So each container acts like 3rd-party cookies are enabled, they get saved, everything works even when silly website authors use 3rd-party services for authenticaton, etc. But it's all isolated, so the sites in one container don't see any of the storage in another.

eduardosasso• 5 years ago

I’m going vanilla. My only default extension is a json viewer. Everything else I toggle on/off when needed.

Egoist• 5 years ago

One less popular extension to add to others list: ublacklist

Helps you exclude any site from your search engine easily.

sebazzz• 5 years ago

Firefox Multi-Account Containers

user_agent• 5 years ago

Some less obvious ones for Chromium based browsers I use:

- Privacy Redirect [redirects you on the fly to custom frontedns for popular services like YT, Reddit, Wiki, etc.]

- Buster: Captcha Solver For Humans [solves captchas for me]

- WebRTC Control [I don't like an idea of leaking IP over WebRTC when I don't use it]

- Change Geolocation [forces a certain coordinates as a response to websites asking about your location]

- Disable HTML5 Autoplay [kind of obvious]

- PocketTube: Youtube Subscription Manager [I can't find anything on YT in the channels I subscribe to without it!]

seFausto• 5 years ago

I use on Firefox:

- Bitwarden - Toggle Reddit Sidebar - uBlock Origin - Gramarly - Reddit Enhancement Suite - Gesturefy

On Edge (along with compatible Firefox Add-ons) - CrxMouse - SwiftRead (for speed reading any site or text. if you pay for Pro you can also speed read PDFs) - Scribe (to create step by step tutorials automatically: https://scribehow.com/signup?affiliate=2fe22b23-335a-4f91-bd...)

edelind• 5 years ago

I am looking and I don't see my preferred extensions without which I cannot live (I won't repeat the already mentioned ones):

- Selection Context Search - very extensible addon which will allows you to select in page and use that for opening an URL: search in any engine, add to search strings in Wikipedia, IMDB, torrents, almost anything

- Ant Video Downloader - downloads any video from page

- Bookmark Tab Here - bookmark by right clicking directly on bookmark folder

- HistoryBlock - blocklists sites from history (for example google.com, your search history)

mekster• 5 years ago

Not a browser extension but I use Adguard Home hosted on my server to have all ads resolve with non existent IP and it can work network wide, so I don't really need to install ad blockers on every device.

But the difference is, since it can't touch the page itself like extensions, you can't get rid of the ad space if it's pre occupied as empty space.

kf6nux• 5 years ago

Just Brave browser. It has built-in ad-blocking and good defaults. It even has ad-hoc TOR if needed.

m9731526• 5 years ago

(Firefox)

- Sidebery: Vertical tabs, personally feels it's better then TreeStyleTabs

- Enhancer For Youtube

- Custom Scrollbars

- Decentraleyes: Use local javascript libs over remote ones

- Dark Reader: Dark mode for pages without dark mode

- To DeepL

joveian2• 5 years ago

For me my most essential ones (Firefox) are: uBlock Origin (advanced mode, RIP uMatrix), Right Click Search (lets you right click search using all available search engines), ClearURLs (mostly to make it a bit easier to copy the useful part of URLs, might help avoid some tracking), and SingleFile (downloads a page into one file using data URLs for images).

gaws3• 5 years ago

Right Click Search (lets you right click search using all available search engines)

You can do this in Firefox without an extension.

joveian2• 5 years ago

How? It is certainly not possible by default. You can set the right click search to be any particular one in the preferences but you can't, as far as I know, get a list so that you can search any particular text from any available search engine, which is what Right Click Search does. I did a quick search for "search" in about:config and didn't see anything that looked related.

edgartaor• 5 years ago

Imagus is a must for me https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/imagus/

atsaloli• 5 years ago

Vimium if you're a "vi" user. :) Keyboard-driven control of the Web browser.

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/vimium/dbepggeogba...

Hakashiro• 5 years ago

https://www.no-thanks-extension.com

Paid extension, and I'd happily pay 10x the price. It is an incredible timesaver and the developer is super responsive when you report sites.

XCSme• 5 years ago

https://unhook.app/ - Remove recommandations from YouTube (so you can still used and watch it without getting into rabbit holes or end up procrastinating)

Colour Contrast Checker - Good when developing, always being able to check contrast between text/background to keep it accessible

LeechBlock - Limit the time on specific websites

BitWarden - Password manager

TextBlaze - Canned messages, good if you often respond to emails with the same message.

Ask HN: What browser extensions are a must-have in 2021?

Related Stories