Google Chrome Extensions can greatly improve your user experience – but only if you know how to use them. Are you taking advantage of what these extensions have to offer?
If you’re a Google Chrome user, you’ve probably heard of Google Chrome Extensions. They’re minor add-on applications and features that can enrich your experience as a user. They help you personalize and customize the way Google Chrome works for you, helping you to become more productive, and work in the way you prefer.
Are you taking advantage of Google Chrome Extensions? Click play below to check out our latest video all about Google Chrome Extensions.
To access your Google Chrome Extensions…
On this page, you’ll see each and every active extension you have running on Google Chrome. From here, you can remove any extensions that are installed but you don’t recognize – there’s no reason to use any that you aren’t familiar with.
Start by heading to the Google Chrome Web Store (simply by Googling that term, and selecting the first result). Here you can browse thousands and thousands of available extensions. Some are produced by major vendors, and some are developed by individual users.
The intent is to offer ways to improve your user experience and workflow. An example of one popular extension is “Screen Castify”, which allows you to record your screen for video production purposes.
You can also get extensions that will integrate other apps you already use on your smartphone with your desktop Google Chrome browser – LastPass, Pocket, Google Calendar, Grammarly, and the list goes on.
You can’t always trust what you see when you’re browsing Google Chrome Extensions. In the past, there have been incidents of malicious code being snuck onto users’ systems via phony Google Chrome Extensions. Some of these extensions have up to 50,000 downloads before they’re recognized as dangerous.
“What we’re seeing is an increase in criminal use of extensions,” said William Peteroy, CEO of the security firm Icebrg, to Wired. “And when we start to see criminal pickup on things it absolutely meets our bar that this is something we need to pay attention to, and something users need to start paying a lot more attention to than they are right now.”
Make sure to check out the reviews, ratings, and other info on a given Google Chrome Extension before you download it. Furthermore, examine the permissions the extension is asking for, so you don’t give it unnecessary access to data or wide capabilities that it shouldn’t need to fulfill its role.
Furthermore, just by visiting the wrong website, a dangerous Google Chrome Extension may download itself to your browser automatically. That’s why it’s smart to periodically check your extension page and remove anything you don’t recognize.
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