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13 cool Chrome extensions for Gmail
We scoured the hundreds of Chrome extensions
designed for Gmail — whether they modify the UI of the webmail service,
or add new features to it — and picked the best ones. Emphasis was
placed on extensions that are free, and not tied to another site, web
app, or other online service.
Actions for Gmail
This extension adds up to four buttons to
the right of the ‘checkbox’, ‘starring’, and ‘mark-as-important’
functions that are to the left of every message listed in your Gmail
account main page. These extra buttons let you archive, delete, mark as
spam, or mark as read/unread an email by simply clicking the button,
without needing to open the message, or needing to click its checkbox
first and then selecting whichever of these four operations you want.
Attachment Icons for Gmail
A paperclip icon to the right of a
message listed in your Gmail main window represents that a file or files
are attached to that email. This extension determines what kind of file
is actually attached, and changes the paperclip icon to a more specific
image. So, if it’s a PDF, the attachment icon becomes a tiny image of a
PDF document symbol. Attachment Icons for Gmail can recognize and
assign unique icons for several file formats, which include media
(images, sound, video) and Microsoft Office (Excel, PowerPoint, Word).
Checker Plus for Gmail
This extension is the very popular, with
over 800,000 users recorded by Google. Checker Plus for Gmail notifies
you of new emails with pop-up windows, which show a preview of an
email’s first few lines, in the lower-right corner of your OS’ desktop.
By clicking its icon in the Chrome extensions toolbar, not only can you
glance through first-line previews of your new emails, you can do most
email management functions without ever needing to open the Gmail main
page. You can even compose a new email directly from the extension —
again, without having to go to the Gmail main page. The settings to
adjust the UI of Checker Plus for Gmail are many, and intimidating to go
through. Fortunately, its default settings will probably satisfy most
of your needs.
CloudCodes Insertable
This is one of the most impressive Chrome
extensions for Gmail that has been recently released: Copy cells from an
Excel spreadsheet, and you can paste them into an email you’re writing
by clicking a button that this extension adds to the email composer
toolbar. The data and formatting of the cells, including their colors
and sizes, will remain intact. (The email must be written with “plain
text mode” off.) Your recipient will also see them in their original
format. We found this extension also worked with other spreadsheet
programs, like Google Sheets.
Gmail Label Column Resizer
In the Gmail main page, the email label
categories and Google Hangouts chat windows share the left column, and
you can adjust the sizing they share with one another by dragging down
or up the horizontal border between them. This extension adds a
resizable vertical line between this column and the panel listing your
messages. So by dragging this boundary side-to-side, you can adjust to
your liking the width of the first column in relation to the panel.
Gmelius
Gmelius provides settings to modify big
and small details of the Gmail UI, such as: removing from the main page
the Hangouts window or header, which contains the Google logo and search
box). (The search button will then work as a switch that you click to
hide and unhide the header.) It can also strip out the “People” widget
that shows up whenever you view an opened email. Gmelius can add various
things, some of which are handled by other extensions in this article:
highlighting the listing of an email in the main page with a color when
you move the pointer over it, and changing the paperclip icon to
represent what exactly an attached file is.
multiNotifier
If you don’t need all the features of
Checker Plus for Gmail, or prefer a Gmail checking extension that uses
fewer system resources, then multiNotifier gets the job done. It can
check up to five Gmail accounts, giving you a preview of the first line
of each unread email when you click its extension button. Notification
windows pop up from the lower-right corner of your OS’ desktop
environment, each showing the first snippet of text from a newly arrived
email.
PixelBlock
If you’d like a free tool to block email
trackers, try PixelBlock. It automatically prevents a tracking service
from being notified when you’ve opened an email sent to you through it.
PixelBlock marks tracked emails with a crossed-out red-eye icon by the
sender’s name listed in an opened email. Clicking this icon reveals the
name of the tracking service, if it can be identified.
RightTasks for Gmail
Normally, when you turn on Google Tasks
in Gmail, this to do tool appears as a pop-up window at the lower-right
corner of the main page. RightTasks for Gmail sets Google Tasks inside a
new column to the right of the panel listing your emails. This column
can be neatly stowed away by clicking a button on its title bar, which
turns it into a skinny vertical black bar. Clicking this bar brings back
the column containing Google Tasks.
Row Highlighter for Gmail
From the developer of Attachments Icons
for Gmail, this extension, like the Gmelius suite, highlights the
listing of an email in the main page with a color when you hover the
pointer over it. The highlight color can be customized to be whatever
you want, and you can select two colors to differentiate between an
email that’s marked as read or unread.
Smooth Checkbox for Gmail
After you install this extension: In
Gmail’s main page, click the checkbox by the listing of an email, but
continue holding down the mouse (or touchpad) button and then move down
or up: The listings of other emails below or above will be highlighted
and their respective checkboxes will become checked when the highlight
sweeps over them, and unchecked as you move the highlighting away from
them.
Strikethrough
For some reason, Google didn’t include
the ability to format any of the text you write in an email with
strikethroughs. This extension simply adds this; it seamlessly
integrates a strikethrough button among the other styles in the text
formatting toolbar of the email composer window.
UglyEmail
UglyEmail doesn’t block tracked emails
from reporting back to their senders when you open them. Instead, in the
main page, it marks received emails that are being tracked with a black
eye icon by their listings. So you can see which are being tracked
before opening them. The caveat in the present version of UglyEmail is
that it doesn’t appear to mark emails that are being tracked from an
anonymous source.
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