Google Chrome extensions can make our lives so much easier.
There are so many different tools to make us more productive, and just to make browsing on the web so much more convenient.
Well, in today's video I wanna show you five of my favorite extensions.
Everything that will save you time.
To manage all of your tabs in a convenient manner.
So, without further ado, let's dive in.
Hello everyone, Scott Friesen here at Simpletivity, helping you to get more done, and enjoy less stress.
Minimize and save your Chrome tabs with OneTab
And the first one on my list today, has to do with tab management.
Does your browser ever look like what you see here?
You perhaps have 10 or maybe many, many, more tabs open at any given time.
Now, not only is this a little distracting, as you go looking for where you need to be, or what's listed here, this can also be a bit of a resource hog.
Because having all of these websites open, each and every one of them can take up valuable processing power.
Well that's exactly where OneTab comes in.
So here you see the OneTab in my extensions list, if I select it, what it's gonna do, is it's going to condense everything that was open into a single tab.
Now you may notice that this very first one, this very first tab that I have pinned, did not get collapsed.
You can change that setting if you want, but I've changed the setting here in OneTab, that anything that is pinned, I don't want to collapse it.
But, now, I've got everything in a convenient single tab.
So if I wanna continue, I can open up a new tab, and go to work the way that I want.
But, I can always come back here and say, "You know what, I do wanna go back to LinkedIn."
Let me click on that one, and it will open up that tab for me.
So, it allows me to minimize and condense all of the tabs open, that I have here.
And if I ever do wanna come back here, and just say, "Restore All", well, I've got that option as well.
And I can restore all of those tabs in the same order, in the same way that they were displayed in the first place.
So if you're wanting an easier way to manage all of your tabs, and also keep a history of them, be sure to check out OneTab.
Disable less used Chrome extensions with Extensity
Now the next one on our list today, also has to do with improving the performance of our browser experience.
Sometimes when you have all of your extensions installed, they can start to weigh down, and slow down, your Chrome experience.
Well that's where Extensity comes into play.
When you have Extensity installed, what you get is a nice convenient list of all of the extensions, and all of the Chrome apps that you currently have installed.
But what Extensity does, is allow you to disable them, when you want to, or when you need to.
So for example, here you can see I have several of my extensions grayed out.
That means that they're currently disabled.
They not only do not appear up here, but they're not running in the background either.
Maybe I don't need "Full Page Screen Capture" all of the time.
But when I do, all I need to do is click on Extensity, come in here, click on this, and now it's available to me.
Now I can go ahead and use that extension.
When I'm done using it, maybe I only use it once a week, or once in a while, I can come in here and disable it immediately, so no longer is it going to be a resource hog, as a part of my browsing experience.
The other nice thing is that it gives you this nice convenient gear icon.
So if you need to change settings immediately, sometimes it's faster to click on Extensity, and come down here to the gear icon.
So if you want a better way to manage all of your extensions and also disable those ones that you only use from time to time, be sure to check out Extensity.
Record your screen with Screencastify
Now the next one on our list has to do with screen recording.
And this is a question I get very, very often.
"Scott, what do you use for screen recording?"
Well, when it comes to my videos here on the Simpletivity channel, I use Camtasia.
But if you need a free solution, and especially if you are only needing to record short videos, then I would recommend that you check out, Screencastify.
So with Screencastify installed, when selecting it, what you will get, is a small menu here, allowing you to choose what you want to record.
Make sure that you've set up the correct microphone, and if you want to, you can record your webcam as well.
Now Screencastify is absolutely free, for videos under five minutes in length.
If you need a longer video, you can always upgrade.
But what I like to use Screencastify for, is to record those short videos.
If I'm needing to help out one of my clients, and I know I can describe it to them quicker and easier in just a short video, I'll use Screencastify.
So with everything set up here, all I need to do is select this big blue "Record" button.
I can choose what I want to record, in this case I want to record my entire screen, I'm gonna hit "Share", and now, in, three, two, one, I am recording.
So now I am capturing everything that I'm doing here.
I can point to certain areas of the screen.
I can narrate, and ask questions, if I'm, you know, again, if I'm asking questions of a client, or pointing certain things out.
Down below here, I can hit this "Pause" button if I want to jump to a different tab, or set myself up for the next part of my recording.
The other nice thing is, you can add some features here, such as a focus mouse.
So if I want to show the focus of the screen here.
Let me hit "Play" again, so I've resumed my recording, now I can use this focus mouse to point out certain areas of the page, or certain things that I'm speaking of.
When I'm all done, all I need to do is come down here and hit "Stop Recording", that will immediately open up the editor window here.
So what I can do at this point is, I can review my recording.
I can see what I've done, and if I need to, I can even trim certain sections of this recording.
And in the top right hand corner, you get a "Copy Shareable Link".
This is ready to share immediately.
Why, because Screencastify links directly to your Google Drive account.
So these videos are automatically saved to your Google Drive account, so you can start sharing them immediately.
If I select "Copy Shareable Link", what I can do now is paste this into an email, I can share it via text, and they can now access and watch this short video.
If I want to, I can also do other things, such as publish it to YouTube, or get an embed code, or even download it to my system.
So for a quick and easy video capture, you'll be wanting to check out Screencastify.
You know, I just wanna take a quick moment to thank all of you who provided comments, and suggestions, for today's video.
And if you have a particular extension, or a particular app that you would like me to feature in a future Simpletivity video, be sure to let me know in the comments down below.
Find business email addresses with Hunter
Next up on our list is for anyone who is dealing with sales, or leads, or just needing to contact someone and not sure where to find their contact information.
And for this purpose, we're gonna use an extension called "Hunter".
So here I've landed across a particular website, and let's say that I'm wanting to get in contact with someone who works at this business, or at this organization, but I don't know what their email address is.
I can't seem to find them on LinkedIn, I'm not even sure, perhaps, who I need to contact with, but I just know it's someone at this organization.
Well with the Hunter Chrome extension installed, all I need to do is select it, and what it's gonna do is, pop up this menu.
And it's gonna show me all of the publicly available email addresses, related to this organization.
And here you can see, it's gonna show me 251 results, just for this organization.
Now for privacy reasons, I've decided to hide the actual information here, on the left hand side, but let me give you a quick run-through.
So right at the very top, it's going to tell me that the most common pattern for this organization is, first initial, plus the last name, at their domain name.
So even if I can't find the particular person that I'm after, if I know their name.
If I know their full name, or perhaps I can find it elsewhere, such as LinkedIn.
I've probably got a really good chance of getting to them with that email format.
And I can use this search bar here to see all of the 251 that they have listed here.
But the other nice thing, is that, as I review this list, you can see that it'll sometimes even give me, the title of that individual.
Here we can see that this person is actually a sales rep, and they've been verified.
So how have they been verified?
Well on the right hand side, what Hunter does is show you, all of the different sources, where they found this information from.
So if I click on this down arrow, it's telling me, that here are some of the public websites and webpages, where it has found this person, and this email address.
So no, Hunter is not combing through confidential, or private information.
These email addresses are being pulled from publicly available websites, but they've just made it that much more convenient for you to use.
There's also this handy "Plus" button here, so if you want to save your leads within Hunter, all you need to do is hit this plus button, and now you can easily go back to those leads.
So for anyone in sales, or looking to find certain individuals, Hunter is an extension for you.
Resize your tabs and split-screen with Tab Resize
Now the fifth one on our list today, has to do with, again, convenience.
And especially if we are managing multiple sites, and multiple tabs up top.
This one has to do with resizing our tabs, and splitting our screen into as many different quadrants, or columns, or rows, as we like.
So let's say I want to have two websites side by side.
All I need to do is select "Tab Resize", and what it's gonna do, it's gonna give me a few handy presets here, of the different ways that I can display these websites.
Or, if I'd like to, I can create my own custom layout.
Let's go with this default here, of one by two.
If I select it, it's immediately gonna take the last two sites that I visited, and split them side by side.
So now I can look at this on the left hand side, and start editing information on the right hand side.
I can make that comparison.
I can just, I can choose this again if I want to Tab Resize, and choose any type of dimension that I want.
This is so helpful, especially if you have a wide screen, or have been thinking about getting a second monitor, but maybe don't need it.
If you have a convenient tool, such as Tab Resize.
Well, there are my tips for today.
And I would love to hear from you next.
Do you have some of your favorite Chrome extensions that I didn't include in today's list?
Be sure to let me know in the comments down below.
Thank you so much for watching, and remember, being productive does not need to be difficult.
In fact, it's very simple.
