Seven useful Chrome extensions for school

Google Chrome was first released in 2008 and has become the most popular web browser to date.

What I love about Chrome is the extensions. Most of us are probably familiar with it and even use them frequently. 

One thing extensions can do is to help boost productivity. It provides you with what you need with just one click provides features that a normal laptop or computer does not have. It can be extremely helpful especially if you’re a student and time is of utmost importance.

Here are some free Chrome extensions to help you get through school:

No matter what course you’re in or subject you’re studying, there’s a chance that you will have to write at least one research paper or report. That means plenty of citations to do! 

Citing can be tedious and time consuming, especially if you have references to many other sources. Not only can it be annoying to search for the authors’ names, publishing date and other requirements across various papers, having to compile them all in a set order can be a chore too.

The different styles can also be confusing and even I tend to get APA and Harvard referencing mixed up, as different modules require different styles of referencing.

With MyBib, citations are made easier as all you have to do is click the logo and it’ll automatically generate citations for the website you are currently on.

Once citations are generated, all you have to do is to copy and paste it into your reference list.

Download MyBib here and there will no longer be a need to manually search and type out your citations!

Another problem many students face when researching for papers are intrusive pop ups that get in your way, preventing you from reading the text until you agree to a condition.

Especially if you have AdBlocker on, pop ups might require you to turn it off before they grant you access to the website. All these will hinder your productivity when all you wanted to do was read a chunk of text.

With Popup Blocker, you won’t get any pop ups blocking your view at all. Browsing the internet and finding what you were searching for will be way easier.

Download it here.

Beautify and inspire yourself through your dashboard with Momentum.

A refreshing upgrade to your normal dashboard, Momentum turns your potential into progress with a simple yet beautiful starting page.

Momentum displays the time at the center of the page with an aesthetic photo as the background, along with the current weather and temperature.

It also provides you with a to-do list where you can list out your tasks for the day and tick off the completed ones, ensuring maximum productivity.

Start off your day right by downloading Momentum here.

The worst thing about conducting research or having to access different websites for various tasks is the tab clutter you end up getting.

Many of us often switch between tabs and choose not to close them as it is easier to find the site we are looking for.

However, this all backfires when there are too many tabs open that all that’s visible are the website icons. To make things worse, having numerous tabs can cause a lag and battery drain on our laptops or computers.

These issues can be solved with OneTab.

Whenever you find yourself with too many tabs, click the OneTab icon to convert them all into a list. When the need for those tabs arises, you can choose to restore them individually or all at once.

Download OneTab here.

Many of you have probably heard of Grammarly due to the advertisements they always play on YouTube. While the ads can get a little annoying, there is no doubt that it works.

From grammar and spelling to style and tone in the English language, Grammarly helps eliminate errors and enhance your writing.

While Grammarly is free, the Premium version that offers more features has a fee. But, the free version works just fine and provides the basic necessities such as spell checking to improve your writing skills.

Download it here.

Procrastination and distractions are a common hindrance many of us face. It’s almost human nature to find it hard to sit and focus on a task. We just have to scroll through social media for a few minutes or watch just one more episode.

Although most of us recognise this problem and try to avoid it, it still takes quite a lot of self-control to stay focused for a long period of time. That’s where Forest comes into play.

A self-motivated and interesting method to help you overcome distractions, Forest lets you plant a digital tree that will grow and thrive as long as you avoid blacklisted websites. 

You can choose which ‘distracting’ sites to blacklist, such as YouTube, Netflix or Facebook. The moment you cave and enter any of your blacklisted sites, the tree you planted will sadly wither away.

This sense of achievement and responsibility will help anyone avoid distractions and improve their time-management skills.

Download Forest here.

As someone who owned almost 30 different coloured highlighters for her physical textbooks and found it therapeutic to highlight, it was a little sad when I grew older and every document for school went online.

To make matters worse, laptops don’t really come with highlighting features, let alone in different colours. I had to resort to copy pasting important notes from research papers individually. That was until I found out about Weava.

You can also annotate and make notes along the way.

With the world becoming more tech-savvy, almost everything is online now. This extension makes note taking and researching easier. There is no more need to keep track of sources and copy paste things one by one.

Weava helps simplify the researching process and increase productivity. Download it here.