10 Great Facebook Extensions For Google Chrome
Facebook will never be exactly how you want it to be; it’s likely never going to add that one feature you think it should, and most probably, it’s not going to bring back that old feature that you loved. The company certainly will not call you up and ask you how you feel about a new feature they are thinking of adding, because Facebook does what it does. You can either move to a different social network, stop complaining about Facebook, or install extensions to get it to do exactly what you want. Where Facebook disappoints and fails, browser extensions come to the rescue. Here’s a list of Chrome extensions that add or fix broken features on Facebook and make the social network easier to use.
Facebook Messenger
Facebook Messenger as an app has debuted on both Android and iOS. Firefox, one of the top three browsers in the market, has integrated it within the browser itself and yet Chrome users have nothing similar to use. Facebook Messenger, as the name implies, is an extension that mimics the messenger app in your browser. It opens as a separate window that you can send and receive messages in. You can view new friend requests, notifications, and messages from the top bar.
Clicking the menu button opens the sidebar that lets you switch to your news feed, view events, or visit one of the groups you’ve joined.
Facebook Chat Fix
The Facebook Chat bar is no one’s favorite; it takes up the entire length of the browser and has its own way or organizing your friends. If you miss the old Facebook chat bar, Facebook Chat Fix will restore it for you.
Facebook Panda
If you’re not a Bing or Microsoft fan, you might find it annoying that all maps embedded in Facebook use Bing maps. Most people would say that maps are something that Google does exceptionally well and if you agree, Facebook Panda is an extension that will replace Bing maps with Google Maps. The maps wouldn’t be interactive the way they are when you embed Google Maps, and the zoom feature wouldn’t work either, but the map itself will be considerably better, especially for several places outside US and Europe where Microsoft’s offering is severely lacking.
Status Snapper
Your Facebook news feed is a source of information on what’s going on in your friends’ lives, but it might also be a treasure trove of funny (read ridiculous) things your friends say and sometimes they’re just too good to not share with the world. Status Snapper is a Chrome extension that lets you take a screenshot of an update in your News Feed, blur out whatever you want i.e. names, display pictures, location information etc., and save the result as an image to share with the world.
Download FB Album Mod
If you’ve ever looked at your photo albums on Facebook and wondered where the ‘Download all’ button was, you aren’t alone. Facebook lets you upload as many photos as you want but when you want to download them, it’s less than cooperative about it. Download FB Album Mod is a simple (and slightly ugly) Chrome extension that lets you download both small and large albums in one go. It adds a button to the URL bar and upon clicking it, you can select how you want to download the album. If you’re currently on the album’s page, you can click ‘Normal’ to start downloading the album. If you have a photo open instead of an album, simply copy its ID from the URL bar, click ‘Load from specific id’ and enter it when prompted to; the extension will then automatically download the album to which that photo belongs.
Images open in a new tab; to save them, either save the entire page as an HTML page and the images will be downloaded in a separate file, or click the ‘Change Name’ button and download the album as a zipped file. The extension also has a nice image viewer as well.
Do Not Track Me Facebook
Facebook tracks your activities like a hound on each and every page of the social network, and to say that it’s anything but pleasant is an understatement. The obvious way to avoid being tracked is to sign out of the network, though a smarter way of doing it is using an extension like Do Not Track Me Facebook which strips URLs shared on Facebook so that it can’t track which links you click on in your news feed. If NSA comes calling though, we can’t help you.
Revenge Poke
It’s been a while since I’ve been poked on Facebook and that I owe to Facebook’s decision to bury the ‘Poke’ button under a drop-down. Though unfortunately, that doesn’t mean Poke wars are over for everyone. If your friends poke you incessantly, Revenge Poke is the ultimate weapon you need to win this war. It automatically pokes all your friends who’ve poked you when you visit the Poke notifications page.
Facebook Chat Alerts
Facebook added sound alerts for new updates and messages that you receive on Facebook. The alert sounds, dubbed annoying by many, play no matter which tab you’re on, so that you know there’s new activity on your Facebook account. These alerts are all triggered by events of a common nature; when someone interacts with you. Facebook Chat Alerts gives you desktop notifications when one of your friends logs in to the service. The extension is incredible; it lets you receive notifications for all friends or for select friends only. You can also get notifications when a friend goes offline, and when a friend messages you.
Revert FB Photo Viewer
The Facebook theater view is not popular but fortunately, if simply open the image in a new tab, it will revert back to the old view. Revert FB Photo Viewer is the easier way to do this; it will always load images in the old viewer by default.
Be warned that it is possible not all extensions will work with each other, though as far as our tests are concerned, they performed well. Other extensions installed in your browser might also interfere with one or more of them, so your mileage may vary.
Did we miss your favorite Facebook-related Chrome extensions? Don’t forget to share them with us and our readers in the comments below.
This stuff is extremely useful. Thanks for the wonderful share. 🙂