My Favorite Chrome Extensions for Developers

Chris Mendez -

As web developers, we rely on a suite of different tools to get our job done effectively. Google Chrome is a big part of that, but hundreds of Chrome Extensions for app development. Here are just a few of my favorites:

Crypto

  • Metamask is your best friend in the world of crypto.

Consumption

RSS

Music

Consumer Awareness

Tech Support

Remote Working

  • Wondershare is fantastic for screen recordings that you can directly save to Google Drive.

Web Development

  • JSON Formatter will help you quickly see JSON formatted data from a public API.
  • Clear Cache enables you to clear all of these specific items: App Cache, Cache, Cache Storage, Cookies, Downloads, File Systems, Form Data, History, Indexed DB, Local Storage, Plugin Data, Passwords, Service Workers, WebSQL.
  • POSTman is suitable for both Mac and Windows users who are developing apps that connect via server-side APIs.
  • PAW is still my favorite API tool. I prefer it over POSTman.
  • EditThisCookie does what it says it does.
  • User-Agent Switcher is useful when you need to test your application across different browsers to simulate end-users.
  • Web Developer Toolbar has been around for so long I'd pretty much call this a Legacy Plugin. It's still beneficial.

Research

Brand Research

  • GoFullPage is great for visual competitive analysis. This is the fastest way to screenshot an entire web page without stitching things together within Adobe Photoshop.
  • What Font? helps you figure out the name of the font that is inspiring you.

Industry Research

  • Bypass Paywalls is excellent for researchers needing access to content blocked by content publishers seeking to serve you ads, steal your cookies or tamper with your sessions.

Market Research

  • Archive.is ensures that that article you read today is preserved as you once studied it or still around three years later. I use this all the time when I'm building out my Appendix for Product Specs or General Requirements docs.
  • BuiltWith can help you reverse engineer competitor websites.
  • Alexa Traffic Rank is not accurate at all, but it's a good enough data point for beginners.
  • SEOquake
  • Spider Pro is a WYSIWYG-type page scraper for beginners. I usually recommend this to writers or jr marketers before having them upgrade to Scraping Bee

Marketing

QR Code Builders

  • QR Code Monkey is still my favorite. I just like the balance between ease of use and customization.