The criteria for this list
What if your web browser could help you save time? Well, in today's video, I'm sharing with you seven Chrome Extensions, which do just that.
And the best news of all, they're all absolutely free. Hello, everyone. Scott Friesen here at Simpletivity, helping you to get more done and enjoy less stress.
And that's right, every single extension that I'm sharing with you today is either completely free or has a free forever option. So, let's dive in.
Awesome Screenshot & Screen Recorder
How often have you been wanting to share something with someone else and you know it'd be a lot quicker if you just sent a quick video recording?
Let's say, for example, I'm redesigning my website and I wanna tell my web designer that, you know what? I wonder if we can change this image here, and change the title of this, and I like what's going on here.
Do you know how long that would take me to write in an email or include in a text message or a chat? Wouldn't it be easier if I just took a quick screen recording?
Well, that's where Awesome Screenshot & Screen Recorder comes into play. Here under Chrome Extensions, all I need to do is click on it, and I can start recording right away.
Now, just before I show you a quick demo, take a look at the variety of things that we can do here. We can record beyond just our desktop.
We can also record our webcam if we want. We can also take screen captures.
Now, in many cases, I find that many of you already have a screen capture tool that you like, but this is quick and easy if you want to record a video.
All I need to do is say Start Recording and pick what I would like to record. I'm gonna hit Share in this case.
It's gonna give me a quick countdown, and now we are recording. Now, just before I start to narrate here, what I want to point your attention to here is the bottom left-hand corner.
Because if I click on this mouse cursor, I can select to highlight the mouse. Now, you're used to seeing this here within my Simpletivity videos, but now you can do it yourself as you record videos for whatever purposes that you need.
So I can go over here and highlight something over here. If I want to, I can annotate as well.
So if I wanna say, you know what? I don't really like this one, this is not so great, but this image is great. Let's continue with that.
In the very top right, when we go back to our extension, you can see that we have a counter here, so we can see how long that video is lasting.
If I select this and hit Stop, we are going to be brought to the awesome screenshot page, where we can now preview our video here.
We can edit it if we like. The other nice bonus is that we can generate a shareable link.
So right now I can copy this to my clipboard and I can paste it in an email and share it with whoever I want. Awesome Screenshot also allows you to connect with other popular services, including Slack, Asana, and Trello.
Weava Highlighter
Number two on our list also has to do with interacting with things online, and that has to do with highlighting or retaining information for later.
How often have you been reviewing a PDF document, or maybe just a website and saying, oh, this is great? I love this quote here.
I'd like to include that maybe in my own blog article. Well, all I need to do when I have Weava Highlighter installed is I can highlight this section here, and now I am given a few color options.
I'm gonna use the traditional yellow here, and now I'm starting to highlight text directly on this website. Maybe I wanna come down here and say, you know what?
This is a great quote as well. I'm gonna highlight that as well, but maybe I wanna remind myself what this is all about.
If I click on this highlight again, I can even take a note. This is a great quote. Maybe we wanna include this in, like I said, a blog document or something along those lines.
Now this note is going to be saved with this highlighted option here. What we can do is go into Weava, and now we can see all of the notes that we've collected online.
So here you can see I've collected a few notes, a few highlights I should say, and my notes are saved along with it as well.
The great thing is that whenever I come back to this particular webpage, my highlights are going to be waiting for me here.
So it doesn't matter if I close this tab, if I refresh the page, as long as I have the Weava extension installed, I can come back here on all of my highlights and notes will remain.
Currency Converter PRO
Number three on our list has to do with something that I use quite often, and that is currency conversion. So we wanna take a look at Currency Converter PRO.
So it sits here along with your other extensions, and it's quick and easy, and you don't have to open up another tab.
So here I can just enter in a dollar value, I can select the currencies that I want to convert, and I can get an accurate up-to-date currency conversion.
So if you're dealing with international customers, if you're needing to know the true cost of something, if you're seeing something online, which is not in your own currency, you can easily use this here.
Now, the other nice thing is that we can actually add multiple currencies as well. So let's say there's a few different currencies that you use on a regular basis.
I'm just gonna select these four, for example, and now I'm gonna have them listed here in this window. So if I wanna type in something like $50 US as of today, well now I can see immediately the differences in these other currencies.
And the great thing is that it's just always there when you need it. If I come back here, I can quickly save these currencies that I use most often, and come back and forth, or maybe it's just the top two that I want to go through, or maybe I wanna convert them a different way.
Quick and easy, and I can get on with the rest of my day.
Momentum
Now the next extension on our list is gonna help us save time in a slightly different way. When we open up a new tab, we're often jumping and bouncing around from the variety of different things that we have open at any given time.
But watch what happens when I hit a new tab here. Instead of getting the traditional Google page, which is gonna show me some of my more recent apps or my favorite bookmarks, here, I'm going to get a reminder.
The Momentum Chrome Extension is not just gonna show you the time and give you a greeting and a nice background, which will change throughout the day, but it helps you focus so that you can enter in your number one objective.
So for example, here, I might type in something like, Make a new video. That's maybe my main focus for today.
So every time I open up a new tab, I'm gonna be reminded that making a new video is really what I should be doing today. Now, Momentum is quite beautiful, right?
It's gonna give me the temperature, and it's gonna give me a nice motivational message, and I can customize these things as well.
But what I really like is that you can have your number one task, or your highest priority always visible here so that you can accomplish it and not get sidetracked by everything else on your day.
GetColor
The next extension on our list has to do with colors, especially if you're ever designing or needing a particular color for a presentation, or a website or whatever it is that you do.
How often have you been trying to impress a client, and you say to yourself, boy, I'd really like to get this particular green color, 'cause I know they use it all throughout their website, I'd like to add it to my presentation, but how do you figure out exactly what this green is?
Well, that's where the GetColor Extension comes into play. Up here, if I select the GetColor Extension, I can play around and select a variety of different colors here, but what I use GetColor most often for is this Pick selection here.
So if I select Pick, you can notice that there's a little square beside my cursor. And when I hover over a color, it's going to grab that color.
So let's say I want this green, I'm gonna select that, I'm gonna click it. And when I come back up to GetColor, here is the exact hex color code, which I can select, and I can copy.
Now that it's copied to my Clipboard, I can paste it wherever I need to. So let's say I'm doing a presentation here, and I really wanna impress the client by using this text with their color.
So what I'm gonna do here is I'm gonna go to my Colors, go to my Custom Colors. And all I need to do is paste in what I just selected.
I'm gonna say OK, and now I've got their exact green. It's not just close, this is exactly the green that I saw.
So, GetColor can not only help you save time, but make it so much easier for you to grab the colors that you need anywhere on the web.
Picture-in-Picture
Next up, let's go into YouTube for a second. And let's say that you're following a tutorial, such as, oh, I dunno, maybe my Gmail settings tips tutorials.
And one of the frustrating things is that as you follow along with any tutorial, you may need to switch back and forth, right? Someone is showing you how to do something here, but then you've gotta go to a new tab to actually make those changes and follow along.
Well, that's where the Picture-in-Picture Extension by Google comes into play. So here we are. I am perhaps watching this video, and I want to follow along as this person is changing these settings here.
All I need to do is come up here and select Picture-in-Picture, and it will take that video and pop it outside. So now I can go to any tab. I can even go to my desktop if I want, I can hit the play button, and I can start to follow along.
As they are making changes here, I can follow along and make my own changes. If I need to resize the window, no problem.
I can make it a little bit bigger, I can make it a little bit smaller. I can hit this pause button if I need to make the changes here quickly, and then come back here and hit play and follow along again.
So, Picture-in-Picture can be extremely valuable if you need those YouTube videos on a separate tab or on a separate screen.
Trim for Netflix
Speaking of videos, last but not least, my final extension today, it's maybe a bit of a fun one, but it helps me save a lot of time, especially if I'm trying to browse and find what I'd like to watch next on Netflix.
I get really tired browsing through Netflix, finding things that are actually worth watching. And I often use a website called IMDB to find their ratings.
And here you can see, I've got the IMDB ratings here, so I can try to filter out the things that are something that are a bit more interesting, or at least other people find interesting as well.
But you'll also notice that a bunch of the videos are grayed out. Why is that? That's because I can set the IMDB rating filter level.
So let's say I want to think look at things that are only, like a 7.8 or above. Well, now you can see, I've got a few more videos that are blocked out as I scan through and only see things with that number or higher.
Maybe you don't wanna use IMDB, that's okay. You can also set the Rotten Tomatoes Score here as well, and you can even choose a different date range if you only want to see things that are released after the year 2000, that will filter out things as well.
Last but not least, what this has is also something called a Trim Button. So if there's a particular category that you don't want to see here.
So for example, Critically Acclaimed Dramas, maybe I don't wanna see this as an option today. I can hit this X, and it's going to remove it.
So I won't see it anymore as I browse through these titles. A bit more of a fun one, but one that helps me save time as I try to find something worth watching here within Netflix.
Now, if you have a favorite Chrome Extension, I would love to hear from you. Perhaps I can feature it in a future video.
Be sure to let me know, and share it with others in the comments down below. Thank you so much for watching today's video, and remember, being productive does not need to be difficult, in fact, it's very simple.