15 Best Chrome Extensions for Programmers and Developers

If you’re a developer who doesn’t use Chrome, you’re in the minority. There are many reasons to prefer this browser for programming, such as Google’s huge influence on the direction of the web, built-in features that make development less frustrating, and the number of extensions available.

This last point is crucial. As of this writing, Chrome has over 60% of the desktop market share. It’s no wonder that most extension creators focus their efforts primarily on Chrome. However, if you are any kind of developer, especially if you are a web developer, these are the best Chrome extensions you should use.

Common Development Plugins

1. Session Friendly

Chrome has an awesome feature called custom user profiles that lets you create separate sets of bookmarks, settings, tabs, history, and more. If you haven’t already, you should definitely create one specifically for programming.

But Session Buddy takes this a step further by allowing you to save specific “tab sessions” and switch between them at will, which is handy when working on multiple projects.

Download: Session friendly

2. iMacros for Chrome

iMacros is an extension that allows you to automate repetitive tasks. You can “record” certain actions (such as mouse clicks and keystrokes), save them as macros, and then run them whenever you want with a single click. This includes filling out forms, testing changes, etc. saves a lot of time. For macros outside of Chrome, we recommend AutoHotkey scripts.

Download: iMacros for Chrome

3. Web Timer

Web Timer tracks the time you spend (or waste) on various websites, which can help you curb procrastination tendencies. It only tracks when Chrome is in use and is smart enough to stop tracking when you’re idle. If you want to time your overall online activity without getting into the details, try one of these free online timers.

Download: web timer

4. Impressive screenshot

Awesome Screenshot is an all-in-one extension to capture screenshots, record screenshot videos, annotate and blur captured images, and share your screenshots with others with just one click. One of the most interesting features is the ability to take screenshots of an entire web page and merge it into one giant image. For a solution that works outside of Chrome, check out these best screenshot tools.

Download: Impressive screenshot

5. Users

Usersnap is a useful extension for capturing and annotating web pages, prototypes and apps directly from Chrome. It can help provide feedback and report bugs effectively. This tool can be very important to improve your final product with a smooth workflow.

Download: Users

Web Development Plugins

6. Web Developer

If there’s one extension you should install to make web development easier, this is it. Web Developer offers several handy features, including one-click switching of JavaScript and plugins, window resizing for testing responsive designs, image inspection and debugging, and more.

Download: Web developer

7. User Agent Selector

Of the many “user agent switcher” extensions in the Chrome Web Store, this is one of the best. It is updated regularly and does not steal links. Also, it comes with a set of default user agent strings, but also allows you to create custom user agent strings. In short, it is a reliable working extension.

Download: User agent selector

8. Wappalyzer

If you want to know which web technologies are powering a particular site, Wappalyzer will tell you with just one click. It’s smart enough to detect CMS (like WordPress), web frameworks (like React), tools and utilities (like Google Analytics), e-commerce platforms (like Shopify), and more.

Download: Wappalyzer

9.IE Tab

Microsoft abandoned Internet Explorer. However, if your project for some reason requires testing a website in Internet Explorer, you’ll need an IE Tab that emulates IE in a new tab and allows you to test websites in different versions, as well as control ActiveX. It is very useful if you need your website to be compatible with all browsers, no matter how old it is.

Download: IE tab

10. Click and Clean

When developing a website, there are few things more annoying than constantly cleaning search data to make sure you’re loading the latest changes. Click&Clean not only speeds up the process, but also gives you more control over what you can clean (such as deleting database and plugin data, saving cookies for certain sites, etc.)

Download: Click and clear

11. Font Search

Font Finder is one of the easiest and most effective ways to identify fonts on the web. It’s one thing to right-click an element, choose Inspect Element, and then look at the style sheet to find out what it is.

With Font Finder, simply right-click and select Font Finder. From here, you can get a list of all the fonts used on a web page or just the fonts used in a specific frame. You can even open an interactive version of Font Finder on any web page by clicking its extension.

Download: Font search

12. ColorPick Drip

ColorPick Eyedropper is a tool that allows you to zoom in and get the exact color code of any pixel on any web page. Color code is available in hexadecimal, RGB and HSL. It’s much more convenient and faster than checking the elements to see what colors are used in a style sheet or uploading images and choosing a color in an image editor.

Download: ColorPick Dropper

13. Lorem Ipsum Generator

When you develop a website, you will eventually need dummy text. Lorem ipsum generators abound on the web, but Lorem Ipsum Generator is always immediately available on your current tab. It’s fast and you can customize the number of paragraphs you want and the number of sentences per paragraph.

Download: Lorem Ipsum Generator

14. Check out my links

At the end of a web development project, you’ll want to do a final pass over all the main pages to make sure all your links are working. Check out my links makes this process as simple as possible. Just press a button and the software will analyze all the links on the current page and highlight them as broken or working.

Download: Check out my links

15. Dimensions

Dimensions is more of a web design tool than a web development tool, but since the two tend to overlap, you’ll probably want to use this extension. In short, it instantly measures the distance between two web elements, including text, images, videos, and form fields. It can also measure the distance between the mouse cursor and any of these supported web elements.

Download: Dimensions

Improve your programming workflow with these extensions

In the Chrome Web Store, you can find many programming-related extensions in addition to the ones mentioned above.

You may have already worked out a solution for some of these extensions, but we encourage you to try them out as they can improve your overall efficiency.