Browser Extensions I Can't Live Without | Hacker News Reader

Browser Extensions I Can't Live Without

blog.maskys.com

184 pointsmaskys183 comments

I am too wary of malware extensions to install that many. It is clearly trivial [0] for malware to get into the Chrome store, and Google is not doing enough to make me feel comfortable with it.

Additionally, I know that even as non-malware extensions grow in popularity they are solicited by malware companies to integrate their software in an update. I experienced this first hand with the HoverZoom extension. [1]

[0] https://awakesecurity.com/blog/the-internets-new-arms-dealer...

[1] https://www.ghacks.net/2013/12/26/hoverzooms-malware-controv...

Yes, this - absolutely. Every extension you install is another potential risk/attack vector. Consider the sources carefully and run the least number of extensions possible. Each one potentially has control of your browser, so choose accordingly.

Lately I ended up running much fewer extensions than I used to, and actually looking at their source first.

I think the only closed-source extension I run is lastpass, and I'm evaluating open-source alternatives.

How do people who cannot read code even cope, I don't know.

+1 for bitwarden. Of all the things not to trust closed source software with, passwords are the main one

Can you list those open source extensions you run? I think this could help a lot to cope ..

I signed up for LastPass a couple of weeks ago, and they started sending me spammy emails every single day. I went into account settings and disabled the emails, and they kept coming. I opened a support thread on their forum, linking many other similar threads going back several years, and saying that they have to fix this under GDPR... Silence.

I deleted my account and switched to BitDefender. Still getting the LastPass emails though, whenever I check my spam folder.

Also, LastPass slowed my Android phone a lot. BitDefender doesn't seem to do that.

In short, my recommendation is: stay the hell away from LastPass. They can't even handle an email system, I don't trust them at all to handle my passwords.

> Also, LastPass slowed my Android phone a lot.

Their Windows application was also painfully slow.

I paid them for years but I no longer trust them, it seems to me they are incompetent as an organization even if the people who work there might or might not be smart.

You meant to say bitwarden? Afaik Bitdefender Is an Antivirus.

Oops, yes. Thanks.

Isn't this true, to some degree, with all software distribution channels? Weren't CCleaner and FileZilla hacked to distribute malware alongside the main payload?

Unvalidated auto-update really is an anti-pattern. Giving arbitrary third parties the power to install and run software on your system in perpetuity is a massive attack vector. Most software doesn't represent a large active and ongoing attack surface that auto-updates would be a net positive.

I can't count the time I have heard good things about an extension, went to the chrome store page and ... "asks to read your data on all websites".

Hard pass.

I can't prevent the apps/OSes I use from gathering data about me, but that's at least one vector (although sadly a small one) I can do something about.

I really wish browsers would change their security model for extensions :\

"all or nothing" is ridiculous as the only option - let me revoke access or restrict it to specific sites. I may not care if X has access to site Y, but giving it access to Z means giving it the keys to my life so hell no. I don't even want to use it on Z.

Chrome lets you limit access to a list of specified websites. Right click the extension icon, click manage extension, and find the option there.

Excellent, I hadn't noticed that one yet. Yeah, that's a good start.

It's fairly new (maybe 1-2 years old, I forget), that's probably why you didn't notice it.

I only discovered it because I was going to add a similar feature to my Chrome extension, and I was researching to see how others tend to implement it. I was glad to see that Chrome offers the feature natively, and surprised to see that Firefox didn’t.

You can add domains to protected sites. No addons will work there.

So if you want no extension to be able to read gmail,

Add mail.google.com or google.com to

extensions.webextensions.RestrictedDomains in about:config

I wish there was a way to exclude some websites instead! I want most of the extensions like ad/script/etc blockers to run everywhere, except say GMail.

> "all or nothing" is ridiculous as the only option - let me revoke access or restrict it to specific sites.

Thank you. I've been waiting for Firefox to add this feature for almost 2 years. For a privacy focused browser, this should be a must have, top priority.

I think they have already? In the old days, you just click once to install a mouse gesture addon.

Now you have to dig into the settings. And give it permission before it could work. At first I found that annoying. But upon reflection. I guess it's a necessary evil.

Edit: I misread the parent comment.

You could fork the extension and modify it for your own usage

while true, you can say this about anything which doesn't have any permissions system too. why worry about end-user security, they can just fork and modify.

which means, effectively, that it becomes a 0.001% or worse event. arguably the whole point of privacy-focused (or even -aware) software is to increase that beyond "fork and modify"'s ratio, as far as possible, because it doesn't work in practice for the vast majority of the globe.

In Firefox you can choose for every extension if it is allowed to work in private mode.

But this ties me to use private mode everytime I visit an important site. This is not what I want.

You can add domains to protected sites. No addons will work there.

So if you want no extension to be able to read gmail,

Add mail.google.com or google.com to

extensions.webextensions.RestrictedDomains in about:config

Agreed. Like with Pocket's Chrome extension permission model[1] that has a "read everything on all websites", when really it only needs brief access to the URL when I want to save something.

I tried changing the "Site access" setting to "On click" -- but then the extension started acting funny or not working in some cases.

Chrome has added a more limited "activeTab" permission[2], but even that might be too much since it grants control to the tab and continues to allow permission on the same origin.

Like the GP said, even if the extension developer isn't trying to exfiltrate data, they should do more to protect users from a compromise of their extension, and browsers should give them the models to do so.

IMO, good security models can be a foundation forward to better overall security compared to desktop apps since it seems that browsers are becoming an OS of their own.

1: https://help.getpocket.com/article/912-what-permissions-does...

2: https://developer.chrome.com/extensions/activeTab

Just yesterday I ran into an invisible layer right here on HN when replying with a comment that opened a new page when I tried to click on something.

I disabled all extensions that I don't commonly use and am watching for now, but I have no idea how to actually tell which one did it (many of them were recently updated due to a Chrome change on August 6th or something).

I can't live without Tree Style Tabs[0] in Firefox. It's The Thing that finally got me to switch back to FF and I will never look back.

0: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style-ta...

I can recommend alternatively https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/sidebery/

Much nice I think, but had some bugs with sessions sometimes.

Second. It's the single biggest reason I'm still on firefox.

There's an incredibly useful extension that's not on that list that I bet a good number of HN folks would like:

Vimium [1]

It lets you use keyboard shortcuts to navigate through webpages, click buttons, jump to text boxes, etc. it's been huge for me both as a productivity tool (it's significantly faster than using a mouse for navigation) and also for reducing RSI/strain on my hands.

Here's a video of it in action as you really need to see it being used to understand the different interaction model it provides.

https://youtu.be/t67Sn0RGK54?t=21

1 - https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/vimium/dbepggeogba...

edit: fixed link (but if you enjoyed the writeup of data security requirements let me know).

Vimium is a CPRA checklisk?

Ironically Vimium (and most extensions) are disabled on the Chrome Extensions domains. So when I hit 'yy' to copy the URL of the existing page it didn't copy it, so I instead pasted the last URL I had, which was the CPRA checklist.

Not something I had intended to do, but I hope the checklist was useful.

Ahh, makes sense. Thanks for the reference though. So far I like it.

I used to use vimperator and/or pentadactyl back before the big firefox change that redid how the browser buttons/menus/etc were rendered and it was pretty ideal. The bar at the bottom, the ability to do bind any menu action, the quick addon management interface, the beautiful completion when opening a link.

Since eventually switching to Chrome, I've tried vimium every now and then and always found it lacking. It usually got in the way when I didn't want it to and I'd get sick of trying to figure out how to turn it off for a particular site/just for this one interaction and just uninstall it.

It's been a year probably, so I guess I'm about due for another go.

I use cVim and turning it off for a domain is a matter of clicking on the extension icon and then 'disable for this domain'.

The reason I switched to cVim was that I preferred its approach to the 'type keys to click link on page' feature.

I've been using Tridactyl ever since Vimperator went belly-up. It's not 100% there yet, but it's getting close!

banana_giraffe's comment is pointing out that you linked to an unrelated google doc – maybe you meant to link to the vimium homepage instead?

Fixed. Thanks for the heads up.

There is also the Nyxt browser. Vim, emacs or CUA keybindings available.

https://github.com/atlas-engineer/nyxt

I prefer Vimvixen for Firefox, but it's essentially the same thing. Cannot live without it.

I'm using Saka keys for this. May be availlable for Chrome too, not sure.

On the off-chance that someone reads this and may find it useful, here are my most useful Firefox extensions:

Firefox Container Tabs. Allows me to have multiple office or gmail logins, amazon AWS console sessions, etc etc. And one to keep Facebook walled off in its own little prison. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multi-account...

SingleFile. Allows me to save a snapshot of a page when I bookmark it (or at any other time). This means that when I encounter a page, I can automatically archive a copy to read later without worrying if the author will delete it, or the site will be unavailable. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/single-file/?...

Default Bookmark Folder. Always save new bookmarks to the same place, which is useful for keeping stuff together. I tag my bookmarks when I make them too, to make finding them again much easier. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/default-bookm...

Eno from Capital One. Lets me make a unique credit card for each site I buy from, so I can instantly tell if something is wrong if I see a bad charge. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/capital-one-e...

Tampermonkey. This lets me have a dark mode for Google search, and a bunch of other useful scripts. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tampermonkey/

There's also greasemonkey [0] and violentmonkey [1].

[0] https://www.greasespot.net/

[1] https://github.com/violentmonkey/violentmonkey

True that. I forgot why I settled on Tampermonkey, and I think all 3 can use the same scripts.

I would recommend privacy.com over Eno, though I have not used eno

Cool! I hadn't heard of that site before, I'll have to give it a go.

Thanks! Following your tips I found the Chrome equivalent (https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/sessionbox-free-mu...), but not sure how good it's compared to Firefox Container Tabs

Is there an automated way with SingleFile to save new bookmarks or you do it manually? Can't find it but it'd be super useful.

It should be in preferences somewhere. Let me grab a screenshot: https://imgur.com/3hM8J0y

It's under "Misc" in the options, not "Auto-save"

I was looking on the Auto-save section. Thank you very much :)

In the post: "Shut Up disables comments everywhere. When I trust a platform's audience enough to read the unfiltered outputs from their brains, I enable comments for just that site. Sometimes I turn it back off immediately"

At the end of the post: A comments section with spam in it.

You know, if he can't see it, maybe he forgot it was there? That would be an amusing side effect.

Honestly, I can imagine that content creators would love the option of not seeing their comment sections, at least after they take off. If I were, say, Dan Harmon, I'd be really happy to have the option of filtering every post anywhere with a reference to his work.

Nano Defender hasn’t been necessary in my experience. uBlock Origin can circumvent anti-adblock measures by itself.

I’m skeptical of Grammarly from a privacy standpoint. It seems to be an internet-enabled keylogger.

Grammarly has been in the news for some privacy and security issues (around 2018). It was leaking everything that you typed.

>Grammarly

Are we cool with them now or are they still stealing your data? I'm not up to date

I even pay them for premium. I can't send an email without it. It makes business emailing much more professional.

Can I ask how? What does it correct or suggest that makes it so useful?

I'm curious about this as well. Seems just like a normal spell checker to me

Well, it would highlight your second sentence and offer something like, "To me, it seems just like a normal spell checker."

In a 300 word email I make at least 3-4 spelling errors either because I don't know the words spelling properly (yes there are many words) or because I type fast make mistakes. Grammarly checks their database and compare my sentences and suggest different ones. Try it, it really does help.

Out of curiosity, is English your first language? I can see that it would be helpful for fixing the types of errors you mention, and the kinds that appear in your comment. Does it give suggestions for text boxes like in HN comments as well?

I have tried it and found nothing useful for me, but am interested to know why/how people use it.

You guessed it right. No, it is not my first language that's why maybe I am more inclined to use paid tools like Grammarly. Although, my coworkers/employees are native speakers they make more spelling mistakes than non-native speakers (maybe confidence?). I force them to use grammarly and almost every email there is 5-10 corrections. If you didn't try yet, just download and scan some of your old emails. I bet you will find minimum of 5 mistakes. Better safe than sorry.

As far as I know they still send everything you type to their cloud service, and their privacy policy gives them broad latitude to use that info to "improve the service."

Right now I use "LanguageTool" with the Java-based server running locally. After I imported the ngrams it works good enough to be a clear improvement over Firefox's bad built in spelling/grammar checker. The UI is passable. It does randomly decide I typed another language though and tell me everything I typed is misspelled in that language.

In an ideal world I'd prefer to pay LanguageTool money for their premium product, but they have the same privacy problems as Grammarly. Heck I'd pay Grammarly if they had a more private offering, it is a good idea.

I'm so sick of their ads on Youtube. How is their revenue if they have to show 50 ads to every person in the world per day?

I just use uBlock Origin to clean up websites I visit of their trending sections, recommendation sections, comment sections. Sometimes I get rid of links that I might mindlessly click, like the whole top bar of reddit.com.

For example, these filters work really well on youtube.com

youtube.com##.ytp-pause-overlay

youtube.com##.ytp-suggestion-set

youtube.com##.ytp-endscreen-content

youtube.com###related

Do you have more of this? Perhaps on a github gist?

Worth publishing as a new block list for uBlock.

https://pastebin.com/2HTBfGRF

My Youtube list. No recommened videos on the side, unless playing a music or video playlist.

No other crap, signin prompts, etc

DF Tube let's you do these things and some more.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/df-youtube/

> Privacy Badger + UBlock Origin

The days of uBlock Origin on Google Chrome are numbered. It may not work for Google Chrome when Manifest V3 is implemented (and no recourse provided for uBlock Origin). [1]

P.S: I haven't kept up with the latest developments on this since last year.

[1]: https://www.ghacks.net/2019/01/22/chrome-extension-manifest-...

oof, really hope this doesn't see the light.

On the other hand, this might be the push some people need to start using Firefox.

Or, ironically, MS's chromium fork powering Edge

> MS's chromium fork powering Edge

Microsoft will simply follow Google's lead.

Although it’s not quite as good as uBlock Origin, moving to a network based setup, like PiHole or AdGuard Home, can make great strides across all your devices with minimal headache or worrying as much about Google making it harder to control your web content. It makes it very apparent when I’m browsing on my phone or iPad and they switch over to LTE because all the sudden there are ads everywhere.

At some point I’m sure they’ll start trying to bypass local DNS by forcing DNS over HTTPS to only their approved servers, at which point someone will build a MITM HTTPS proxy for home users that you can seamlessly install onto a Raspberry Pi until we see the next escalation in the never ending battle for our eyeballs.

GP here. You can also try NextDNS.io, which allows you to choose blocking lists. There are apps for iOS as well as other platforms to allow it to be used on all networks (or even configure it not to be used on specific WiFi networks).

If uBlock Origin doesn't update, there'll be a dozen adblockers that work with Manifest v3 on day 1.

It should be quite trivial to write an adblocker that integrates with EasyList using the new APIs.

If its trivial what's stopping you from doing it?

Why would I need to? Manifest v3 isn't even out yet, and dedicated developers will easily beat me to the punch.

What? Manefist v3 is not even out yet...

> If uBlock Origin doesn't update, there'll be a dozen adblockers that work with Manifest v3 on day 1.

You seem to not know what manifest v3 is actually doing.

Any adblocker with a static list of domains per-update of the crx file's manifest is useless. Users would have to install hundreds of extensions (each with dozens of domains that they themselves block), just to have the same functionality.

If any anti adblocking team of any ad network decides to just rename foo.tracker.net to bar.tracker.net, all adblocker extension users would have to REINSTALL the chrome extension manually because the manifest's list of domain is statically builtin.

You're operating off of outdated information. Rules do not need to be baked into the manifest.

>The Declarative Net Request API now allows for the registration and removal of dynamic rules - specified at runtime rather than statically in the manifest. We’ve also added the capability to remove common tracking headers, such as Referer, Cookie, and Set-Cookie.

https://blog.chromium.org/2019/06/web-request-and-declarativ...

The one extension I cannot live without is hover zoom+. Hover over any thumbnail (for a customizable amount of time) and it loads the full size image on top. When people see me using it with google images, they always ask how I did that.

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hover-zoom%20/pccc...

How one simultaneously recommend both Privacy Badger and Grammarly?

Would add HTTPS Everywhere https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere and NoScript https://noscript.net/ to that list

These are essential- I also add Privacy Badger and uBlock Origin. I choose Firefox over Chrome.

If you have the latest chrome/firefox, doesn't that default to https all the time? Thus making "HTTPS Everywhere" redundant?

HTTPS Everywhere will block a site if it does not have HTTPS available iirc. Chrome/Firefox don't do that by default.

you can disable scripts even with ublock, so I don't understand why people still keep noscript

I just use uMatrix. Much easier to manage scripts, cookies and XHRs

Does HTTPS Everywhere actually work for you? It's utterly useless for me as far as I can tell. Try going to some site (say, example.net) in Chrome and watch it just load HTTP.

HTTPS Everywhere only loads HTTPS on a predefined list of sites. I just use SmartHTTPS on Firefox now.

IIRC, you have to enable the "strict" mode, or something along those lines, in the settings before it rejects HTTP connections from being made. I had the same issue.

Thanks, but then what do I do about HTTP-only sites? Why can't it default to HTTPS and then auto-fallback to HTTP when HTTPS connections fail for sites that aren't in the known-HTTPS list? It seems like a logical thing to do instead of just going straight to HTTP.

This only helps you at all against passive adversaries.

An active adversary will just cheerfully block that HTTPS connection because you'll fall back to insecure silently.

I fully understand that and that's still clearly still better than going straight to HTTP, which it's already doing.

That’s an insane amount of extensions, most of which seems to deal with fixing “broken” website or at least make them tolerable.

Reader mode is a little surprising, doesn’t Chrome have that built in?

I have seen it a few times, but only on mobile IIRC and it wasn't consistently shown across all pages where I wanted the functionality. I definitely can't seem to find it anywhere on desktop Chrome.

Enable it in accessibility (on Mobile). Always show 'Simplified View'

Google makes money from websites showing ads, so making a reader mode readily available would be counter to that. There used to be a hacky way to approximate reader mode in Chrome [1] but not sure if that still works. Just another reason to favor Firefox over Chrome IMO.

Google will always give only enough privacy options to give the veneer of supporting privacy, but never enough to truly allow it (e.g., anti-fingerprinting measures). You can't blame them really, it's just not their business model, but if you disagree with that model and its effects on you, you can choose a different browser.

[1] https://www.cnet.com/how-to/how-to-enable-reader-mode-in-chr...

Yes, Chrome has reader mode.

chrome://flags/#enable-reader-mode

Didn't they remove it?

Didn't find it in chromium. Might look again.

I think of extensions as a way to adapt the web to my preferences. Sane defaults are not that universal and it's good to harness the power of the web to make everyone happy.

Yes, Chrome has reader mode.

chrome://flags/#enable-reader-mode

For me it's uBlock Origin and uMatrix. The web is unbearable without those two. Pages load at least 50% faster. Makes you realize the amount of crap modern sites load.

It is mentioned in the link, but I just want to emphasize that Video Speed Controller [1] has been amazing for me. Unfortunately, it didn't work as well on Firefox (stuttering on higher speeds above 2X) when I tried it a year ago. Which means I'm stuck with chrome for at least a decent amount of my activity.

[1] https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/video-speed-contro...

I can recommend:

- Timelense preview for youtube: https://timelens.io/youtube/ (needs greasemonkey or something)

- Opens pdfs in my pdf reader right away: https://add0n.com/open-in.html?from=pdf (invert sumatra pdf on windows and you even have a dark mode: "...\SumatraPDF.exe" -bg-color #000000 -set-color-range #FFFFFF #000000 )

- (there is also one to open in chrome, really good if you are using FF but need to use google products like meet or jamboard)

- TTS with amazon polly support (if you have an AWS account): https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/read-aloud-a-text-...

- oh and mouse users should always scroll my dragging right-click IMO :) https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/scroll_anywhe...

- adblock for youtube sponsored bla bla within the video https://sponsor.ajay.app/

- backup what you typed in form fields: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/textarea-cach...

- stylish if you know CSS. I made wikipedia look more like the mobile version, make visited links visible globally, hide jira crap for sprint plannings etc.

- for good keyboard hint navigation: trydactyl (but saka keys is probably more beginner friendly)

- Show which links are fresh on news sites (e.g. on HN). FF only for now though. Just published it myself: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/developers/addon/seen-it-al....

Your extension's URL seems broken

oops https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/seen-it-all/

I actually use this one a lot, lets you take a video and make it the full size of the browser. I find that theater mode youtube isn't quite big enough on a 4k screen, but I don't want to pop into fullscreen mode.

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/fullscreen-video-t...

Disable HTML5 Autoplay https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/disable-html5-auto...

Saka (Tab search with ctrl-space) https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/saka/nbdfpcokndmap...

Session buddy (for when Chrome tab recovery fails) https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/session-buddy/edac...

urlNeXT (c-s-right arrow to go to the next page, increments numbers in url, works well on forums) https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/urlnext/emepkgfiam...

When I was doing some research, I found these Chrome extensions very useful:

- Export History - Offered by: Christian Genco. Export your browser history as JSON or CSV

- Multi-highlight - Offered by: Alexius Lee. Create a list of words to highlight on the page.

- Super Simple Highlighter - Offered by: dexterouslogic.com. Configure a set of persistent webpage highlighters and tags.

[1]: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/export-history/hco...

[2]: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/multi-highlight/pf...

[3]: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/super-simple-highl...

Hmm, that's a long list. I use zero extensions, and I've never really had the urge to go looking for them. Now I feel like a weirdo ;)

That is quite a list. Some of the choices I don't agree with. For me the first thing I install though is Ublock Origin. Can't use the web without it.

uBlock is a godsend indeed. Which ones do you disagree with, and why?

Not commenter you were replying to, but...

Honestly, most of them. Grammarly in particular because of privacy concerns, but I avoid using any that are not both open source and high payoff.

I use Privacy Badger and NoScript. I may add Ublock Origin to cover the edge cases where I need to enable JS. Anything else is adding bloat, not cutting back on it.

NoScript in particular covers: UBlock Origin, Nano Defender, Hover+Unpaywall, and ShutUp

Most of the others, I already use something outside of a browser or don't need.

Welcome to the club!

Some other unmentioned add-ons that I use frequently:

- Contextlets: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/contextlets/

Adds context menu items that execute custom JavaScript. Think of it as an advanced version of bookmarklets that can use webextension APIs.

Example use case: Search for the selected text in multiple search engines in a new window with discarded tabs.

- Distill Web Monitor: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/distill-web-m...

Monitor website changes and get notification popups, email, SMS or push notifications on change. There are other alternatives that have the same basic functionality but I stayed with Distill as it is more customizable.

The Send to Kindle extension (https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/send-to-kindle-for...) will automatically convert to MOBI for Kindle, so you can skip the EPUB step.

Sweet!

Does anyone happen to know something like this for kobo ? The ones I found not working properly :(

Slightly irksome when by "Browser Extensions" the author only means "Chrome Extensions" and provides no links to equivalents for other browsers. That in itself is fine, but they could've titled it with "Chrome" in the headline, not a general term like "Browser".

Nice list. There are still extensions I wish someone would come up with. Like an extension to make Google Image Search only return images, not videos. I've basically given up on embedding gifs into HTML because it's impossible to find an actual gif with Google. All you get is videos pretending to be gifs.

I will also add flowcrypt in this list to send gpg encrypted mail. https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/flowcrypt-encrypt-...

Thoughts on Mailvelope? https://www.mailvelope.com

I just wrote one to show which links are fresh on news sites (e.g. on HN). FF only for now though:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/developers/addon/seen-it-al...

feedback welcome

Oh god, I really need something like this in my life. I end up losing myself on reddit, hacker news, lobsters like websites. This might ease my burden a bit. Do you happen to have a GitHub link or something, so I can follow the progress ?

Oh I haven't set up git yet. Will let you know. Are you subscribed to HN comments? (e.g. via http://www.hnreplies.com/ )

You'd be waiting for chrome?

I also pasted the wrong link I figured. FF is here: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/seen-it-all/

Just learned hnreplies.com (thanks for that) I am subscribed now. Also, Firefox user here so thanks for the link :). Saved add-on page for now. Good luck on the project!

Use RSS.

Can I add my own ?"BlinkFind"[0]

Yes it's exactly as the name implies ! It will BLINK the text you are trying to find on a page via "Ctrl+F" or "Cmd+F". I honestly can't believe I'm the only user of this extension. I can not for the live of me find half the text I'm looking for on a webpage without it blinking.

[0]https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/blink-find-finding...? utm_source=chrome-ntp-icon

NoScript, uBlock Origin and Dark Reader.

All other ones are nice to haves but those are my building blocks.

What are your nice to haves?

Panorama view (think spaces for tabs) Multi-account container (keeps facebook properties and google properties on their own world) User-agent switcher (I switch to mobile on heavy websites) Evernote clipper FoxyProxy Auto-tab discarder HTTPS Everywhere S3 translator

why noscript though? you can block scripts with ublock

Indeed. And not only 'can' but 'should' :-)

I find the granularity of noscript easier to manage

Probably generation difference. The author is depending on google products and social platforms way more than I'd ever do. Facebook, youtube, gmail, chrome...

Imagus to zoom into images maybe? Buster to solve captchas?

> Buster to solve captchas

Are you a robot?

I hate captchas and love how buster is feeding them their own dog food by using speech to text to defeat captchas!

Seriously though, it almost makes me look forward to sites that have captchas to feel like I’m sticking it to google instead of working for free to help them make their computer vision models better.

> Buster to solve captchas?

Had to install "privacy pass" cos of cloudflare's move to hCaptcha

I love the [Vimium-FF](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/vimium-ff/) plugin, which allows me to traverse the web with vim-like bindings. Great for traversing mouse free.

Great addons, also available at the firefox browser.

I try to keep things light—less time and energy thinking about things that only squeeze out that extra sliver of speed in obscure (for me) use-cases.

I use AdBlock and LastPass, and maybe a clipper—Notion, Instapaper. But other than that, I’ve found more extensions make me less able to focus on getting stuff done, and much more focused on whether I’m using the ‘right’ tool

A majority of these extensions just seem to be ways to deal with shitty JavaScript. IMO, NoScript is really the only one you need.

NoScript gets old fast when websites are breaking left and right.

One websites I use often, it's no hassle because the appropriate scripts are already enabled by domain. On websites I haven't been to before, it's less hassle to take the whitelist approach with than deal with random parasites.

in my firefox (not that it would really matter) I have only four:

Download notifications - since FF has crappy notifications about finished downloads unlike Chrome, so this way I can't overlook finished download

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/gnome-downloa...

HTTPS Everywhere and uBlock origin - no need explanation

To Google Translate - since FF doesn't have built in translation service, so this way I can easily translate page through right click menu

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/to-google-tra...

but if I would be using Chrome I would need just ublock and https everywhere (although not sure if is is not redundant nowadays in both browsers)

All very well, but each new extension adds to "waiting on extension". I tried moving the cache and chrome profile to tmpfs to speed things up. Could some developer embed such functionality into the executables?

Mine:

1. Dictionary by Google. I like double-clicking unknown words for an instant definition or translation.

2. Regex search. When ctrl+F just isn't enough.

3. Duplicate Tab Shortcut Key. For those times when I click on a search engine result before pressing ctrl.

For 3, you can also middle click the back button to reopen the search engine tab again.

Here are all the ways I know how to duplicate a tab: - ctrl drag the tab to the side until a downwards arrow appear and then release

- ctrl click the refresh button (any of the navigation buttons really, although they will clone the previous or the next in the history)

- middle click the refresh button

And my favorite: “yt” key combo when using Vimium-ff.

Additionally, it’s useful because I like to keep related tabs next to each other, so I often used these methods to duplicate a tab (or ctrl/middle click on the new tab button to open a blank one next to the current tab), but now I only need to press “t” to open a new blank tab right next to my current one.

Color picker, produce approx. hex n rgb color of page

screenshot whole page (not always produce good result)

Magnifier

FYI, most of those extensions read your browsing history without any reason...

Page Monitor is pretty great for getting notified when the code on a specific page changes so you can be first to grab something that pops back in stock.

I find that comments are the most entertaining parts of pretty much everything online, especially YouTube.

There is a certain sort of phenomena I've noticed recently where the act and skill of posting are becoming a focus in itself. The podcast Report this Post kind of gets at the essence of it and the joy of delightfully bad posts, specifically. That said, I think that the subtle art of trolling is really understated on the modern web, too (at least to the mainstream, because they're usually the butt of the jokes).

Brilliant way to gain access to The Economist. Kudos, maestro.

Since GDPR websites come with the worst UX for cookie consent. If you feel adventerous and want to ignore cookie popups. I can recommend: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/i-dont-care-about-...

Its much safer and secure to add list Cookie to uBlock Origin.

Or use uBo's element picker. One time job

"I Don't Care About Cookies" slowed my browser down so much on so many sites, it was more annoying than the cookie messages themselves. I got rid of it.

Surprised no decentraleyes

My list of essential Addons:

- Dark Reader: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/darkreader/

- Feedbro: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/feedbroreader...

- uBlockO (easy/default mode): https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ublock-origin...

- uMatrix (block all/whitelist mode): https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/umatrix/

- NoScript (global off; use only for XSS, ABE and CJ protection): https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/noscript/

- Multi-Container: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multi-account...

- Temp-Container (delete all data after tab closed): https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/temporary-con...

- Decentraleyes (whitelist cdn domains in uMatrix): https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/decentraleyes...

- Clearurls: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/clearurls/

- Popup Blocker (strict): https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/popup-blocker...

- HTTPS-Everywhere: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/https-everywh...

I've seen a lot of people recommend LocalCDN over Decentraleyes: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/localcdn-fork...

tabtab

I recently deleted all of my extension off all three browsers (Chrome, Firefox, and Safari). The ad blocking on Firefox is almost as good as Ublock Origin. I found privacy badger to be largely useless.

The only thing I miss is lastpass, but I've gotten used to having it run as a desktop app.

Containers in Firefox were nice, but I've also gotten used to switching accounts.

The fact that extensions get 100% access to everything on your page (including password forms) is just a no-go for me. I have to draw the line somewhere.

You still have to trust your browser and your OS.

Obviously. That's why I said "I have to draw the line somewhere".

I trust my browser and OS more than extensions.

Your security posture is probably different than mine.

Well if you're worried about chain of trust, you could only use recommended extensions on Firefox. They're manually reviewed so you're still only really trusting the organization that runs your browser.

Bonus point if you download the extensions and manually review it yourself.

My comment wasn't clear sorry. I was thinking about privacy, not security.

What I meant is that if you use a commercial OS and browser (and your ISP too) they're still going to exfiltrate your web activity to their servers.

The only thing you really need is uBlock Origin and a password manager. Everything else is fluff.

If you can live without Chrome, you can live without all Chrome extensions in the article; If you can live without a desktop/laptop, you can live without all Chrome extensions. I just don't like this kind of eyeball-attracting title: Too much exaggeration

I agree. No need to be hyperbolic. These titles literally kill me.

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