The Chrome Web Store is full of productivity extensions. But which ones will save you the most time and won't cost you a thing? In this video, Scott Friesen shares 7 Chrome extensions that will help you with work, school, or personal tasks and are absolutely free. Transcript:
Do you like saving time? Maybe you also like saving money. Well, then this video is for you because we're looking at seven free Chrome extensions which are guaranteed to increase your productivity. Hello everyone, Scott Friesen here at Simpletivity helping you to get more done and enjoy less stress. Now the first extension on our list is all about saving time when it comes to accessing and writing emails. How much time have you spent here always having your Gmail open at the ready? Always having to come back here and, oh, I got to write an email, I got to check an email, how many more emails do I have? And this becomes extremely distracting and can really bring down our productivity. Well, with the Checker Plus extension for Gmail, you can have a mini inbox right here at the top of your browser. You may notice this little envelope with the number 83 meaning, I have 83 unread messages in my inbox but if I click on this icon, I get a small or a miniature version of my inbox right here where I can start to delete or reply or I can open up my emails without having to go to a separate tab without having to jump from the screen that I'm already on. But it gets better than that because one of the most distracting things is having to into your inbox to write an email but then you get distracted by some message or something else that is waiting for you here. Let's go back to this other tab instead I'm going to right click and I'm going to say compose and what is it going to do? It's going to open up my very own email dialogue. So, I can write that email to whomever I want but I'm not distracted by anything else, here I can compose my message just as I would within Gmail. In fact, it even has some of the other extensions that I've added here available to me. So, if you want to spend less time in Gmail just have a quick view so you can stay focused on the tab at hand. You may want to check out Checker Plus. Now the second extension on our list is not only going to save you time but it's going to save other people time as well. And it has all to do with showing people how to do things so that you don't have to tell them over and over again. And for that, we're taking a look at an extension called Scribe. Now, in many cases you could choose to record a short video maybe of a particular process or something that you want to show someone else to do. For example, maybe you are an accountant and you need to show someone how to use their bookkeeping software. Maybe you're a real estate agent and you need to show them how to walk through a certain form or really anything that you might want to show someone how to do online. Well, recording a video not only takes time and effort, but sometimes people don't have the time to sit through that video. Well, with Scribe, Scribe will record all of your actions on the screen and then spit out a beautiful text based with images, how to, of those steps. So let me show you right here. I've got the Scribe extension installed here in my browser and I happen to be within Todoist. And maybe I want to show someone how to turn on dark mode right here within the Todoist app. Well, all I need to do is select Scribe and I'm going to say start recording. So, I'm just going to go about it normally just how I would normally make this change. I don't have to record any audio. I'm going to come up here to my account. I'm going to select theme. I'm going to come over here and select dark. And then I don't want to forget to come down here and select update, and then I'm going to hit X just so I'm returned back to the main screen here. You can see that it is flashing in the top right hand corner letting me know that it is recording at the moment. I'm going to say stop recording, and it's immediately going to open up a new tab where it's going to present me with my workflow. And the great thing here is that it has every step already along the way. So, first step navigate to Todoist. Now it doesn't actually have to go here but the great thing is, is if you do have a long and messy or complicated URL it is going to grab it, but all of these steps are editable. So if I come in here and just say, you know what? You just need to go to your Todoist account. I can either leave it like that or I could just say go to your Todoist account. Then click this image, you can see the little highlight there here in the top right hand corner, click theme, that's what I did. Then I told them to click here on the dark theme, see how it captures where I was clicking on the screen and then click update and then click this icon to close that dialogue. So this is super easy and much quicker for someone to go through or to come back and review than simply sending them a video. And I can share it with them via a link, I don't have to send them a big bulky video. I can even share via a PDF, if I want to, I can export this into a PDF. Now, the nice thing is that every single step along the way is editable. So for example, here when it says, click this image maybe I can go in here and say, click on your account profile or something like that, I can be as descriptive as I want before I publish this. And maybe if I don't want them, or if I don't care to show this last step, that's fine, I can just come up here and say, delete this step as well and it's absolutely removed. So now I've got a fantastic how to guide that other people can use again and again and it only takes me seconds. In this case, it only took me 19 seconds to record. In fact, if I wasn't explaining it, it would take even less. So if you want to try it for yourself, it's absolutely free. You can go to scribehow.com. The next extension in our list is all about taking quick notes and reference material and never forgetting where you've put it. And for that, we're looking at Papier, which is the French word for paper. Now there's not a whole lot to show you here in terms of the top of my browser but with the Papier extension installed, every time I open up a new tab, I'm brought to this free form note field. Now, the great thing is, you can do some basic formatting but it's super quick because it's always going to be available to you and no, you don't have to sign up for an account, you don't have to log in. All of your notes here within the Papier interface is saved directly to your browser. So even if I close this tab and I go about my day, if I go and open up a new tab it's going to be waiting for me right there. You can even do some basic formatting as well as you can see, you can include links, you can include a checkbox down here in the left hand corner. You can see all of the different things that we can do including, turning on a night mode if we want, but there is nothing to save. There's nothing for me to, again, access or log in, this is always going to be ready for me. So if you need a super quick way to capture all of those notes and you don't want to remember where you placed it you can put it in right here. Now the next extension on our list is one of my favorites and something that I've been using for a number of years. How often have you come to a website and wish that you could take a full screenshot of everything that you see here? Perhaps I'm redesigning my website and I'd like to get a full picture of what this webpage looks like but am I going to have to take a screenshot here and then a screenshot here and try and paste it all together? Well, you don't have to do that with GoFullPage, which is yes, a full page screen capture. So all I need to do is come up here and select the extension itself. And what it's going to do is take a few seconds to capture the entire webpage. Now, of course, depending on the length of that webpage it may take a little bit longer. But here in just a few seconds now I've got a full picture of what this website looks like. And the great thing is, is that I can save it as a JPEG, I can save it as a PDF, I can even edit it here within my browser if I want to. So, now I can see what the bottom of the page actually looks like, how much dark for example, they have versus light in their color scheme. I can sort of see maybe if I want to mimic this, for my own website I've got a better scope, so, free and easy, GoFullPage, great for taking those full screen captures. Now, speaking of grabbing information off of the web how often have you come across an article or some other piece of information that you would like to either print or convert into a PDF? But here, for example, I've got an ad at the top, I've got an ad here, I've got a video here, I've got a bunch of stuff going on here on the right, I might even have some ads in the middle of the article as well. This is going to waste either a lot of paper or create a ugly looking PDF. Well, with the Print Friendly and PDF Chrome extension installed, all I need to do is click on this option, and in just a few seconds even on the page that I'm viewing it's going to pop up a new dialogue. And what it's going to do is remove as much of those extra things as possible. Not only do I have a much cleaner version which I can use to print or convert to a PDF but I can remove some things as well. So here for example, it has a placeholder for that image. Well, I'm going to delete that and I don't need to know who took the photo because, well we don't have that image anymore. I can remove things that I no longer want as a part of this and do it in real time. So, those three were images. Now things are looking an awful lot cleaner. And I think some of these things down at the bottom are more suggestions. So if I want to go down and delete that, I can do so as well. Immediately from this screen, I can choose to print create a PDF or email it to someone else. And on top of that if I want to make some other minor adjustments maybe I want to reduce the text size, I can do that here as well. So quick, easy, and effective. If you want a better way to print or create PDFs from articles online be sure to check out Print Friendly and PDF. Next up, we're taking a look at an extension which may just make you feel a bit like a superhero, or if you have superpowers. And in this case, we're looking at speed reading actually consuming text information online that much faster. For that, we're taking a look at the extension called SwiftRead. Now SwiftRead is pretty amazing and that it knows how we can consume our text that much faster. You're seeing a very quick example here but I want to show you something in real time. So let's go back to an actual article. With the SwiftRead extension installed, all you need to do is either select the text on screen or you can just choose to speed read the entire page. Now, in my testing, I found that it's probably easier to select what you would like to speed read because otherwise it may grab other information like we see here on the right hand side. But now all I need to do is right click and say, SwiftRead the selected text. I'm presented with a new dialogue and now I can focus in on the words here. Now I'm obviously not doing that as I'm speaking to you and this may take a little bit of practice for you to see how this works but I was amazed at how quickly I could understand and grasp the information that was presented to me here. Now, you can change the speed, your target words per minute. You can change if you want to see more than just one word at a time you can change actually a number of different things here. But if you're wanting to consume your text information that much faster without having to hear someone else narrate it or to have a computer voice do so, SwiftRead might just be the best extension for you. The next extension on our list is going to save you time from switching tabs and having to convert or translate words from another language, which you may not be familiar with. And for that, we're taking a look at Google Translate. You may have used Google Translate in the past or perhaps on your phone, but it gets even better when you use it within your Chrome browser. So here at the very top I can always click on Google Translate and either enter in the foreign word and no, I don't have to tell it from what language it's from or I could possibly paste it in here. But when the extension is installed, it gets even better. All I need to do is highlight the text on screen and then here you can see an icon appears, if I click on it, it's going to convert that and translate it for me so I can read it in English. Maybe I want to see what the sub-headline is, just need to highlight that, and I can click on this. I don't have to, I could copy this, I could do whatever I want to, but if I click on this now I can read what this article is all about. And no, I didn't have to tell it that I was on a German website. It assumed because English is my first language, it made the conversion for me. So a very quick and easy way to get translation services without opening up a new tab. Now, I'd love to hear from you next. What are some of your favorite Chrome extensions which save you time and money so you can stay productive? Be sure to let me know in the comments down below. Remember, being productive does not need to be difficult, in fact, it's very simple. And when you're ready, here are 2 ways I can help you: 1. Streamline Academy: Simplify your software and optimize your workday with exclusive training, courses, and live events. Explore the academy. 2. One-on-One Coaching: Get personalized software and productivity help so you can save time and work a lot less. Schedule a private session. Comments are closed.
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