Browser Extensions

Adblock

Now this is a controversial one. But I wish to enjoy my YouTube videos and surf the net without popups and without long unskippable ads. 

You can get adblock here.

JustBlack

This is quite a redundant extension, but I included it because I love dark mode.
JustBlack renders certain sites in dark mode where possible, but it still doesn't work on all sites. As such, JustBlack is not the only dark mode related extension I use. 

You can get JustBlack here.

Mendeley Web Importer

Mendeley is an important tool for students doing research and writing essays. It allows you to import citations of an article directly into .ris files. Mendeley also compiles all your sources in one place, making it incredibly easy to organise and locate each source. 

I wrote more about Mendeley on my school's subject guide, which you can read more about here. 

You can get Mendeley Web Importer here.

Video Speed Controller

This is an incredibly useful extension I use to adjust the playback speed (usually speeding them up) of the videos I watch. It is able to control the speed of HTML5 videos embedded on many sites. It also works for YouTube videos and Netflix videos. 

YouTube already allows for speeding up to x1.25, x1.5, x1.75 and x2, but VSC allows for finer control at x0.1 increments. 

Even though YouTube has shortcut keys of < and > for decreasing and increasing playback speed respectively, VSC also has shortcut keys of S and D to serve the same function. 

I highly recommend VSC for everyone because we all deserve to skip ahead on slow lectures, or those draggy videos that simply want to increase our watch time. 

You can get Video Speed Controller here.

Google Meet Grid View

So grid view is not the default view for Google Meet conferences. This extension allows for that. 

You can get Grid View here.

Forced Dark Mode - Chrome Flags

This is an extremely powerful web tool. It's still experimental, but basically what it does is it forcefully renders any website in dark mode, and this works for many sites, most notably many of Google's sites, like Calendar, Translate and YouTube. 

Dark mode is really essential and I am willing to do a lot to acquire dark mode. 

You can get to this Flag by entering this on your URL bar: chrome://flags/#enable-force-dark