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

249 pointsby johnnyApplePRNGhá 5 anos311 comments

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.

311 comments

gorhillhá 5 anos

> 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.

Jaruzelhá 5 anos

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...

thmthá 5 anos

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.

raffraffraffhá 5 anos

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 [[email protected]]

- gmail [[email protected]]

- 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)

karaterobothá 5 anos

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.

pvsukale3há 5 anos

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...

lemonade5117há 5 anos

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.

pmlnrhá 5 anos

* 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.

treenursehá 5 anos

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.

nichoshá 5 anos

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.

rektidehá 5 anos

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.

loufehá 5 anos

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.

Jeddhá 5 anos

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.

tgvhá 5 anos

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.

nathanaldensrhá 5 anos

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

jacekhá 5 anos

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/

swissfunicularhá 5 anos

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)

enriqutohá 5 anos

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

y7há 5 anos

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...

taxyz23há 5 anos

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...

vanviegenhá 5 anos

- 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

hagbard_chá 5 anos

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.

Glenchhá 5 anos

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!

aigohá 5 anos

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.

SAI_Peregrinushá 5 anos

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.

seFaustohá 5 anos

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...)

akosterhá 5 anos

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.

rohflehá 5 anos

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

dulus21há 5 anos

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.

sf_robhá 5 anos

* 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.