A Chrome extension is an add-on or plugin that enhances and customizes your browsing experience.
As a student, extensions can be extremely useful by boosting your productivity, helping you stay organized, and making research quicker.
Extensions work within your Chrome browser to provide additional functionality. You can access relevant tools and features with just one click without having to search endlessly through tabs.
Whether it's checking grammar, generating citations, taking screenshots, or blocking distractions - there's an extension for pretty much everything you need.
With so many options to choose from, it can get overwhelming to find the right ones.
But I've rounded up the 10 best tried and tested extensions that no student should be without. Read on to explore how these handy tools can make your life easier.
Best Chrome Extensions Every Student Needs
Tight deadlines, a ton of homework, and the need to take in and remember a lot of knowledge are all part of university life. Along with your diligence, you can make the whole thing less stressful using the appropriate Chrome extensions.
The extensions I'll discuss address common needs like staying focused, planning research, citations, and more. Each one makes simple but powerful improvements to how you work. They work together to create a vital toolkit to help you succeed academically.
Grammarly
The best tool for polishing written work is Grammarly.
As a student, you are required to produce essays, lab reports, dissertations, and other assignments. With Grammarly, you can quickly correct errors and make your work easier to read.
It checks your typing for spelling, grammatical, and punctuation mistakes. When it finds problems, it offers explanations and fixes so you can improve while editing.
In addition, the program contains an integrated dictionary, scores how well you use terminology, checks for plagiarism, and suggests citations.
The free version covers the fundamental features. However, the premium versions offer more sophisticated recommendations and eliminate advertisements. Grammarly might help if you are concerned about writing flawless documents.
Quilbot
Staring at a blank page and not knowing how to start your essay? Quilbot is here to rescue you from writer's block. This clever tool auto-generates high-quality content on virtually any topic to kickstart your writing.
Simply put keywords about your assignment, and Quilbot will instantly output relevant paragraphs or articles. You can then tweak its suggestions to match your style so it's not obvious the content wasn't originally yours. It saves a huge amount of time coming up with what to write.
And that's not all. Quilbot also neatly rephrases text if you need help expanding on an argument without unnecessary repetition. Your essays have never flowed so smoothly!
Visor
Online research sessions can easily descend into chaos across dozens of tabs. Visor lets you neatly organize open web pages to stay on top of things.
It works as a sidebar menu that previews thumbnail images of all your currently open tabs. You can scroll through visually and switch between sites much faster. No more endlessly searching for that one Wikipedia page you had open!
Visor also colour codes tabs into groups based on the website or your custom tags. With just a glance, you can see which resources you have for History vs Biology assignments. It's a simple but really effective way to bring order to the madness.
Text Blaze
Typing and editing large documents is draining. With Text Blaze, you can automate repetitive writing tasks to save hours of work.
It lets you create custom keyboard shortcuts and fill-in-the-blank snippets for everything you regularly type. For example, set up shortcuts so that typing "ad1" automatically expands to your full postal address.
You can also integrate dynamic fields in your snippets that pull in live data like dates and names depending on context. The time saving here soon stacks up, allowing you to get more written in less time.
Text Blaze is fantastic if you often reuse blocks of text and want to speed up your typing flow. Install once, and you'll be working faster for the rest of your degree.
Clockify
Have you ever lost track of all the hours spent on an assignment only to undershoot your time log? Clockify allows you to accurately record what you're working on and for how long.
The extension integrates a productivity timer into Chrome. Just click to start tracking time whenever you begin an activity. You can assign tasks to clients and projects so everything stays neatly organized.
Clockify shows handy metrics on where your time goes each day. It also compiles timesheets and summaries for your records or client reports. No more guessing - let Clockify handle the time tracking for you.
Cite This For Me
Academic writing depends on quality research backed up by citations and references. Creating proper bibliographies and crediting sources is vital but extremely fiddly.
Cite This For Me automates all of this citing nonsense perfectly. Just install the extension and click its button whenever you highlight or copy text from a web page. The tool auto-generates a citation in your chosen format, ready to drop into your assignment's bibliography.
It works seamlessly with Word and Google Docs for super quick citing while you write.
Alternatively, store all your references in Cite This For Me's online library to cite another time. The extension handles references so you can focus on hitting your grade targets instead.
Web Highlighter
Web Highlighter is my top productivity recommendation for researching online. It replaces boring, plain text web pages with an interface where you can actively engage with content.
As you browse, click to highlight important sentences in bright colours and add text annotations. No more aimless reading - the extension forces you to determine what's relevant in real time.
Your customized highlights sync across devices so you can pick up past research sessions anywhere. With all key points visually marked, you'll breeze through recalling critical information mid-essay writing. It's a simple tool that makes a world of difference.
Screencastify
Preparing presentations is a key aspect of demonstrating academic skills. Screencastify takes the stress out of recording and editing video content for your talks.
The browser extension provides Chrome with specialized screen recording technology. Capture exactly what you want in HD quality on your desktop with just one click. Draw attention to elements by annotating your videos with arrows, text boxes and more.
Getting footage is the first step, but editing is often the trickiest. Screencastify makes trimming clips, inserting captions and exporting to different formats an absolute breeze. Your content will rival professionally made tutorials.
Stand out from your peers by making your next presentation engaging and impactful with Screencastify.
OneTab
Juggling a hundred open tabs inevitably slows your machine down to crawl. OneTab provides a game-changing solution to excessive tab clutter.
Running out of memory? Simply click OneTab's button to instantly convert all tabs into a list. This frees up system resources for your current task while storing sites for later.
Reopen individual pages whenever needed or restore everything at once. OneTab isn't the most advanced extension here, but it solves a universal problem that affects every student. Tabs overload is gone with one click!
AdBlock
The internet is crammed with annoying ads, banners, pop-ups and autoplay videos. They demand attention and waste your precious time and bandwidth.
AdBlock ruthlessly eliminates every single ad across the web to let you enjoy cleaner, faster browsing without distractions. Pages load up to twice as fast when not bogged down by heavy ads.
The extension is highly customizable, so you can fine-tune what gets blocked. Secure peace of mind with advanced malware detection capabilities, too.
Say goodbye to the ads now and prevent hassles before they interrupt your workflow. AdBlock lets you focus on studying without wasting clicks on things you couldn't care less about.
Best Chrome Extensions for Students’ FAQs
I'm sure you still have plenty of questions about the best and most useful Chrome extensions that we haven't covered. Let's wrap up by answering some frequently asked questions from students.
What is the best Chrome extension for students?
Grammarly is my top recommendation for most students. Perfecting your essays and other writing is critically important, and this extension handles the proofreading for you. The free version is robust, but I suggest investing in Premium if you can for extra suggestions.
What is the most useful extension for Chrome?
For general usefulness across all students, Visor is incredibly helpful for organizing the chaos of multiple open tabs while researching. Customizable tags and previews let you navigate faster, find important pages quicker, and ultimately stay more productive.
What is the best Chrome extension for medical students?
Medxtend is purpose-built for medical study, featuring clever tools like an interactive anatomy map, medical dictionary, plus health news resources. Flashcards and quizzes also make self-testing a breeze.
What is the best study tool for students?
StudyFecth is my top unique recommendation for a study aid. Let its AI capabilities cut your research and writing workload significantly.
Conclusion
Hopefully, you now understand the huge range of benefits that extensions can bring to your academic work. The 10 featured in this guide represent the absolute best options for you based on usefulness and features.
I highly recommend trying Grammarly, Visor and Quilbot first. Combined, they will massively expedite your research and writing process. The rest fill important niches like referencing, tracking work, and avoiding digital distractions.
Treat extensions as your personal toolkit to confront every challenge the university throws your way. They make tasks quicker, easier and far less frustrating. Why wouldn't you want that extra help?
If you’d love to improve how you perform academically, I invite you to try out StudyFetch suite of AI tools that’s been tailored for students like yourself.
With your new knowledge about unlocking Chrome's potential, you're ready to supercharge your studies today!
