150 Best Browser Extensions & Web Apps Of 2012

Chrome and Firefox came a long way in 2012, as did the web itself. The year saw Google try its hand at cloud storage with Google Drive, offering users 5GB free storage and integration with Gmail. Then there was the usual number of apps that integrate with Dropbox to add a certain functionality to the service better and a few extensions that helped you make the most of your Google Drive. Among other highlights were apps and extensions for social media management, making Facebook cover pictures and keeping your treasure trove of Instagram pictures safe. What follows is a compilation of the best web apps, Chrome extensions and Firefox add-ons that were covered here at AddictiveTips during the past year.

Chrome Extensions

1. Privacy Manager (A control panel for Chrome security settings & junk data cleaning)

2. Checker Plus for Google Reader (Quickly view & manage unread Google Reader feed items and get desktop notifications for new ones)

3. Image Viewer (Enhance Chrome image viewer with zoom, rotate & pan controls)

4. GmailWiz (Send custom quick-replies in Gmail)

5. Save to Google Drive (Official Google Drive extension for saving web pages, images, audio & video to your cloud)

6. BoxCryptor (Encrypt Dropbox and Google Drive folders)

7. Hide Facebook Suggested Posts (Hide Facebook suggested posts from your feed)

8. Responsive Twitter (Give Twitter a responsive design & navigate it using Chrome Omnibar)

9. tubeStop (Get better YouTube keyboard shortcuts)

10. SoundCloud Storm (Add “Download Now” button to SoundCloud)

11. Bookmarks Tagger (Add tags to chrome bookmarks & search for them from the Omnibar)

12.Facebook Nanny (Restricts Facebook access unless you have notifications)

13.Please bring back photo grid view! (Bring back the old filmstrip view in Twitter’s image viewer)

14. Notes for GMail (Add sticky notes to your email threads)

15. Instagram for Chrome (A light, elegant viewer for the photo-sharing giant Instagram)

16. Unsocialize (Bypass Facebook Social Reader app install requests to read articles in peace)

17. Extension Automation (Automatically enable particular extensions on specific websites)

18. What’s the font? (Identifies selected fonts on any website)

19. Right Inbox (Schedule Gmail messages for later)

20. Highlightr (Ranks RSS items in Google Reader based on their social buzz)

21. Twic (Nifty Twitter client for Chrome with support for multiple accounts)

22. eHistory (Add time-based search filters to Chrome’s default History Page)

23. Revert FB Photo Viewer (Browse Facebook images in the old viewer)

24. Glue (Personal clipboard for online content with support for tags)

25. HashMask (Helps you avoid mistyping passwords)

26. TabsPreview (Adds an eye-candy 3D preview for open tabs)

27. WasteNoTime (Time management utility with website blocking & usage tracking)

28. DuckDuckGo Zero-Click Info (Displays instant answers from DuckDuckGo in Google Search)

29. Mail Control (Check, read & compose Gmail Messages when offline)

30. RE: Channel Blocker (Prevent certain channels from appearing in YouTube’s suggestions list)

31. SeeIt! (Preview images & articles within Reddit by hovering over their links)

32. Feeds for Google Reader (Pulls full content for truncated RSS feeds in Google Reader)

33. Impulse (Save products from any online store to a personal shopping cart)

34. Open Tweet Filter (Filter your Twitter feed based on content/keywords or users)

35. GIF Scrubber (Great viewer for animated GIFs with frame-by-frame scrubbing)

36. GoogleMusic For Chrome (Control Google Music playback from Chrome Toolbar)

37. Secure Bookmarks (Adds a password-protected bookmarks list to Chrome)

38. Incognito This! (Move any open tab to a new incognito window)

39. Facebook Fast Delete Message (Quickly delete individual or all Facebook message threads with one click)

40. Music Controller (Control music playback for YouTube, Google Music, Rdio & others from Chrome Toolbar)

41. Ginger (Arguably the most efficient grammar & spell check extension available)

42. Episode Guide (Track airing dates for your favorite TV shows)

43. Simple Text Bookmark (Lets you highlight text within a webpage for when you return to it later)

44. Account Bookmarks (Easily keep track of all web services that you’ve signed up for)

45. Show PDF In GViewer (Save PDF & text attachments in Gmail directly to Google Docs)

46. Pixable (Browse all Facebook photos from a neat pop-up)

47. Chromium Wheel Smooth Scroller (Get iOS-like smooth scrolling with full customization)

48. ChromeTunes (Listen to YouTube playlists & tracks from within a slick pop-up)

49. OmniDrive (Search Google Drive from the Chrome Omnibar)

50. seevl For YouTube (Enhance YouTube’s music search with filters & artist information)

51. Google Reader Inline (Displays source articles without having to navigate away from Google Reader)

52. Bookmark Sentry (Scans & deletes duplicate/broken favorites)

53. Stash (Instantly save & close opened tabs to reduce clutter)

54. Better Facebook Gallery (View larger photo thumbnails in Facebook & download entire albums)

55. MediaPlus (Resize, move & add effects to images/videos on any website)

56. TPGoogleReader (Auto-detect RSS feeds for a website, quickly subscribe to & view them in Google Reader or Feedly)

57. GrabInbox (Quickly schedule messages for Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn)

58. SwiftClick (Switch tabs & launch URLs without exiting full screen mode)

59. TabMemFree (Automatically unloads inactive tabs after a defined period of inactivity)

60. autoConvert (Converts values on a webpage from Metric to Imperial System and vice versa)

61. MagicCube FeedStore (Browse Google Reader feeds when offline)

62. Urban Dictionary Search (Highlight words to look up their definitions on Urban Dictionary)

63. User-Agent Switcher (Change Chrome User Agent to view how content would appear for a certain device or browser)

64. YouTube Volume Controller (Easily control volume, playback speed & other settings for multiple YouTube videos from the same place)

65. youRhere (Mark your reading progress within any article for later)

66. Page Stickies (Add semi-permanent sticky notes to any webpage)

67. Recent Tabs (Cycle through recently viewed tabs using user-defined hotkeys)

68. Reference App (Generate Harvard-style references from any webpage)

69. Foxish Live RSS (Get Firefox live bookmarks feature in Chrome)

70. Windows resizer (Resize Chrome Browser window to various screen & mobile resolutions)

71. Pandora For Chrome (Official Pandora extension for Chrome that lets you easily control & rate music )

72. Search Assistant (Search multiple search engines for the same term with only a click or two)

73. GNews (Get desktop notifications for Google News and quickly view latest stories)

74. Reddit Glide (Browse Reddit in a two-pane view using multiple keyboard shortcuts)

75. Swap My Cookies (Lets you switch browsing sessions to quickly log in to the same websites with different accounts)

76. Recent History (Quickly access Chrome’s recent history, closed tabs & bookmarks)

77. Enhanced History (Filter and clear Google Chrome History by date, name & number of visits)

78. Google Mail Multi-Account Checker (Quickly check & read emails from multiple Gmail accounts)

79. IMDb Info (Preview Links & Info On IMDb Without Leaving Current Page)

80. Media Hint (Chrome, Firefox: Unblock Hulu & Pandora in unsupported regions)

81. CloudMagic (Chrome, Firefox: Unified, real-time search for Twitter, Gmail, Contacts, Google Docs & more)

82. InBox Pause (Chrome, Firefox: Temporarily block incoming emails in Gmail & set an auto response for them)

83. Quick Maps (Chrome, Firefox: Instantly view any address on a website in Google Maps)

84. PriceBlink (Chrome, Firefox: Find the lowest price for products of interest)

85. Facebook Panda (Chrome, Firefox: Replace Bing Maps with Google Maps on Facebook)

86. InstaRead (Chrome, Firefox: Quickly view articles in Instapaper from the right-click menu)

Firefox Add-ons

1. Drag-n-Drop Multiple Files (Drag & drop multiple files onto Firefox to view them in separate tabs)

2. Fire Media Player (Adds a nifty sidebar for creating YouTube playlists & controlling playback)

3. Private Browsing Auto-Exit (Automatically close private browsing after ten minutes of inactivity)

4. ResumeLater (Bookmark YouTube videos & resume playback from where you left off)

5. Cockpit Home Page (Access downloads, bookmarks, add-ons & more from within Firefox Start Page)

6. Prevent Tab Overflow (View all open Firefox tabs without having to scroll through them)

7. Gmail Notes Sidebar (Add notes for each conversation/email in Gmail)

8. Location Bar Enhancer (Transform the location bar into a breadcrumb display)

9. Tagmarks (Organize bookmarks & easily add tags to them)

10. FB PhotoTheater Killer (Disable theater mode on Facebook & get the old photo viewer back)

11. Full Screen Plus (Quickly switch between different screen modes)

12. Hide Your Menubar (Lock Firefox Menu bar with a password to limit access to private data)

13. Tabsflip (Switch between multiple tabs with a hotkey, much like the Alt+Tab multitasking feature in Windows)

14. Janus (View likes/dislikes under the thumbnail preview of each YouTube video)

15. Remove Temporarily (Use the inspector tool to remove page elements in websites)

16. Side Tabs (Moves tabs from the top to a vertical sidebar)

17. iReader (Read articles in a clutter-free layout stripped of ads and the website’s theme)

18. FindList (Turns the find-in-page box to a drop-down list that saves the last 50 searches on a web page)

19. Omnibar Plus (Access history, bookmarks & search suggestions from Firefox Omnibar; requires Omnibar add-on)

20. AnonymoX (Browse anonymously & access restricted websites)

21. Youtube Video Quality Manager (Set a default quality for all YouTube videos to be played in)

22. YouTube AutoPlay Stopper (Stop YouTube videos from automatically playing when launched)

23. Google Redesigned (Give Gmail, Google Reader, Calendar & Docs a sleek new theme)

Web Apps

1. Google Drive (Google’s multi-platform cloud storage and document management solution)

2. Spoon (Run hundreds of Windows apps in virtualization without having to install them)

3. Spotify (Web player for streaming music & radio online)

4. HERE (Nokia’s map service redesigned & rebranded)

5. Bitrix24 (Easy project management, feedback & file sharing for web & iOS)

6. Jumpshare (Instant file sharing with online viewing for 200+ file formats)

7. Norton Zone (Cross-platform, online data backup and sharing tool for web, Windows, Mac, Android and iOS)

8. PDFzen (Annotate & share PDF documents from web, Windows, Mac & iOS)

9. IBM Docs (Google Docs-like online office suite with advance share options)

10. Norton Identity Safe (Online account manager with simple offline password management tools)

11. Swizzle (Merge email newsletter subscriptions and unsubscribe in bulk)

12. Azendoo (Elegant web app for collaborative workspace management)

13. Instaport (Export Instagram photos by tag, time or likes)

14. Bananatag (Track sent emails & provides detailed statistics for them)

15. PubMyCal (Manage & share your Google calendar with just a click)

16. Oogwave (Plan, coordinate and execute collaborated projects)

17. InstaCover (Create a photo collage out of Instagram photos for your Facebook timeline cover)

18. Iorad (Records actions in any app & auto-creates an annotated tutorial out of them)

19. ListenItLater (Like Read It Later Or Instapaper for music)

20. Infogram (Quickly create embeddable graphs & charts for your website)

21. Free The Photos (One-click transfer all your Instagram photos to Flickr)

22. QR Hacker (Create customizable, colored QR codes with images embedded in the foreground or background; encodes text, links, phone numbers, VCard and WiFi network credentials)

23. WhatFontis (Identify fonts from any image)

24. Kanbanflow (Private & shared to-do list management with a Pomodoro timer)

25. Hojoki (Unified workspace for group-management of all your cloud apps)

26. Citelighter (Automatically create a citation page for your research report)

27. Picmonkey (Online photo editor with customizable filters, blur effects and facial retouching options for portrait shots)

28. screenleap (Stream your screen to another computer with one click, without any signup)

29. Capturetocloud (Save, share & organize online content in the form of a document)

30. Mixy.tv (Create playlists of videos from Facebook, Twitter & Reddit)

31. Musicsmasher (Simultaneously search Grooveshark, Spotify, Soundcloud, Rdio & more)

32. 5th village (Pinterest-like visual search engine for ebay, Amazon, & Shopstyle; also acts as an Instagram viewer)

33. MyPermissions (Manage & remove app permissions for Facebook, Twitter, Google & more)

34. Bliss Control (Centralized dashboard for multiple social networks settings)

35. PollHut (Create your own polls and vote/comment on others’)

36. BookFlavor (Discover new books on Amazon & read their reviews)

37. kl1p (Access & share text, documents, images & code with a custom URL)

38. TextDropApp (Edit text files in Dropbox directly from your browser)

49. ColorHexa (Comprehensive color tool with support for creating custom gradients)

40. Hopper (Easily save links, images, text & files for later through drag and drop or the Ctrl+V keyboard shortcut)

41. CanvasDropr (Real-time online collaboration, sharing and editing of images & videos)

So, did you find any useful apps, extensions or add-ons that you hadn’t heard of until now? Let us know if we missed any of your favorite ones from 2012 by adding a comment in the section below.

You might also want to check out our other end-of-year compilations:

150 Best Windows Apps Of 2012

35 Best Windows 8 Store Of 2012

100 Best Mac Apps Of 2012

150 Best Android Apps Of 2012

100 Best iOS Apps Of 2012

50 Best Cydia Tweaks Of 2012

40 Best Windows Phone Apps Of 2012

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Fatima Wahab

Fatima has been writing for AddictiveTips for six years. She began as a junior writer and has been working as the Editor in Chief since 2014. Fatima gets an adrenaline rush from figuring out how technology works, and how to manipulate it. A well-designed app, something that solves a common everyday problem and looks

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