HACKER Q&A
📣 techly

What cool browser extensions have you created to simplify your tasks?


I just want to know how you automated or made your work simple through a browser extension.


  👤 AlexITC Accepted Answer ✓
I created https://cazadescuentos.net, which let me track products I want to buy if the price were smaller, it notifies me once the price drops.

Also, it's useful after buying an item, if the price drops, I can use the price get some money back, I have a guarantee service provided from my credit card doing that, but most times, it's simpler to just buy the item again, and return the first one.

It's funny cause the idea was from my wife, and I ended up using it far more than she, most stores are from Mexico with some international ones.

It's worth adding that, notifications are browser only as the app doesn't require you to register any personal information (like email/phone).


👤 Tjorvens
Not related to work, but tiny automation.

https://github.com/Hemmingsson/Quick-Preview

Before i built this extension i needed to click play on every Soundcloud track/mixtape that looked interesting and then manually click on the waveform to quickly skip trough to see if it was something worth listening too.

Now i can just hover any play button and it will automatically play sampels from the track/mixtape. See it in action here: https://youtu.be/DwsNiXsCZvo

Extra: Thought it was kinda hard to differentiate normal tracks from mixtapes on Soundcloud, so this extension helped me with just that. https://github.com/Hemmingsson/Mixtape-Highlighter


👤 chrisdalke
I made a plugin called Focus.me - https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/focusme/jdkgogfonl... - Although it doesn't automate a workflow, I use it to stay productive during a workday. Focus.me blocks a list of websites in fixed time increments: The press of a button adds time to a timer, blocking sites until the timer expires. I find myself instinctively flipping between Youtube, HN, reddit etc. in a loop, and the plugin helps break this cycle and get the ball rolling quicker when I need to focus.

I made the plugin because I wasn't satisfied with other productivity/website blocking plugins which often contain URL tracking and other telemetry. Focus.me is completely local and doesn't record any information of any sort.


👤 seanwilson
I made https://www.checkbot.io to test websites for common SEO, speed and security problems, like broken links, duplicate titles and unnecessary redirects. It tests multiple of pages at a time as well as localhost pages so it's useful for identifying site wide problems and confirming you've fixed them.

I developed it for myself while working as a consultant then released it as a general tool. It's saved me a lot of time in putting quotes together, code review and confirming fixes are complete.


👤 phekunde
I developed an addon[0] for myself to avoid online distraction. It has a small price tag so that I don't get overwhelmed by support requests :)

If you have any feedback or suggestion on the addon then please do let me know at the email listed on the addon.

[0] https://switchoff.neocities.org


👤 Tajnymag
An extension to correctly parse out citation information from an UpToDate article. I'm not sure about the current state of Zotero's extractor, but it was simply not working at the time on UTD links.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/uptodate-extr...


👤 kirubakaran
I use my https://histre.com/ for collaborating on online research (bookmarks, notes, highlights, and tree-style history). The browser extension code is open source: https://gitlab.com/histre/browser-extension

👤 zzo38computer
I wrote a extension to treat the URLs entered in the location bar as relative instead of absolute. It is much more useful, I find. I also made a extension to add a "view source" option to the popup box that appears to ask where to download a file or if you want to open it with some program, since often it is a plain text file that I want to view.

👤 jurgenwerk
When I write, I often want to make my writing more sophisticated. For that purpose I built an extension which find synonyms for words.

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/synonyms-deluxe


👤 BilalBudhani
I made https://markr.app to highlight & capture content which come across interesting to me when surfing on the web.

I like to organise all the interesting pointers at one place and refer them in future when I want to.