Browser extensions: one per problem, not a collection

Every installed extension opens access to your pages and a possible point of failure. How to keep only the ones that solve a specific problem, and how to test the doubtful ones for a week.

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CMDglows article cover about browser extensions
  • An extension installed for one problem often stays long after the problem is gone, with access to every page you open.
  • An extension is not a setting. It is permanent access, and its author can change what it does without telling you.
  • One sentence per extension is enough to sort them. A week without it then tells you what it is really worth.

Open your browser and look at the row of icons to the right of the address bar. Ten extensions, two you don’t recognize, and one that changed color without you knowing why. You installed each one for a good reason, at a moment when you had a specific problem. The problem is gone. The extension stayed.

This is the most common case, and it doesn’t come from a lack of discipline. Installing an extension costs nothing, the gain is immediate, and nothing tells you the day it stops being useful. You end up with a collection, and you call it a toolkit.

This article starts from the opposite belief: an extension is only useful if it solves a problem you can name, and it has a cost you don’t see. I’ll show you how to check that, and how to test the ones you doubt in a week.

Where the extensions you keep come from

An extension almost always arrives after a bad week. A meeting that never ends, invoices to chase, a search page drowned in ads. You look for a fix, you find one, it works, you install it. The next day the problem is gone, but the action is done and nobody undid it.

That is the trap. The browser keeps whatever you hand it, and it never asks the question a good tidy-up asks: does this still earn its place? An open tab eventually weighs on your attention. An extension eventually weighs on your pages. In both cases, nothing forces a decision.

After two or three years, the list of extensions tells the story of your worst weeks, not the story of the work you do now.

An extension is not a setting, it is access

When you install an extension, the browser shows the permissions it asks for. Chrome describes these permissions as the access an extension gets to data and sites, and that line deserves more than a click on “Add”. An extension that can “read and change all your data on all websites” runs on every page you open: your webmail, your bank, your invoicing tool, your client dashboard. That isn’t automatically dangerous. It is access, and you should know you granted it.

What changes over time is quieter. An extension can be sold, abandoned, or rewritten in an update you never read. Stores are not a maintenance guarantee. Many extensions are built by a small team, sometimes by one person, and nothing obliges them to stay useful to you. Your browser won’t warn you the day a tool you chose for your work becomes a different tool.

A concrete case: I don’t care about cookies hides cookie banners on almost every site. It was bought by Avast, and its store page now lists GEN Digital Inc. as the offeror (version 3.6.1, updated October 24, 2026). A community version, I still don’t care about cookies, was published by another developer (version 1.1.9, last updated December 9, 2025). Same idea, different publishers: the store page, not your memory, tells you who you are installing.

So the cost is not just memory, though memory counts. It comes down to three things: the access you grant, the maintenance that can stop, and the interactions between extensions. Two tools that modify the same page can get in each other’s way, and you can lose an evening hunting for the culprit when the problem is the combination.

That cost can be measured, and it is not spread evenly. DebugBear tested 5,000 popular extensions on a test page (2024 report): 86% add less than 50 ms of CPU processing to each page, but 1.7% add more than 500 ms. The heaviest are often AI assistants: MaxAI adds 2.3 s. Others, such as Monica AI, Klarna or Avast Safeprice, delay when content appears, because they run their code as soon as the page starts loading. The test is simple: open a busy page, open Chrome’s task manager (Shift + Esc from the Chrome window), read the CPU column for each extension, then disable the heaviest one for a week. If nothing changes, you can remove it without regret.

The uBlock Origin case: same name, different tool

uBlock Origin is the extension I almost always recommend. That is exactly why it illustrates the trap. Its developer says the full version no longer runs on stable Chrome, because Chrome removed the extension system it depended on. On Chrome, the only option is uBlock Origin Lite, which works differently and has fewer blocking rules. The full version still works on Firefox and Brave (ublockorigin.com).

That changes the question. If Chrome is your main browser, “I have uBlock Origin” no longer means the same level of protection it did two years ago. An extension’s value depends on the browser running it, so check that at install time, not from memory. The extension’s store page shows its version and last update date. That is the first place to look.

The sentence that does the filtering

Here is a test that needs no tool. For each extension, write one sentence in the form: “It solves [this problem] for [this task].” If the sentence holds without an “and also”, the extension stays. If you need an “and also”, you have two extensions, or one that does too much to be reliable.

The sentence must name a problem, not a wish. “It makes my pages prettier” is a wish. “It stops me reading white pages at 11 p.m.” is a problem, and it has a precise fix you can judge. An extension you cannot write a sentence for has no role. It only has a place in the toolbar. For search, a browser nickname often does the job without any extra access: Find it without installing one more app shows how to set it up.

What I keep, role by role

For focus, uBlock Origin stays the first piece, with the browser caveat above. Dark Reader handles late reading on very bright pages. It darkens the display without touching the text, and its Chrome Web Store page shows an update on October 28, 2026. Unhook removes YouTube’s recommendations and Shorts when you open the platform for a specific search. Its last update dates from March 2026, so I keep it, but I watch it. News Feed Eradicator covers a neighboring case: hiding the home feeds of several platforms. Its page (version 1.0.36, updated July 9, 2026) lists an individual developer, a maintenance signal worth watching.

Email triage is a different role. If you spend your day in Gmail, one extension that clears the interface is enough. Simplify Gmail is one I still see maintained: its page shows an update on October 26, 2026. Gmail toolkits that stack tracking, scheduling, CRM and templates should be treated as full software, with their own data and their own subscriptions. Install one only if you know exactly which process it replaces.

For tabs, Toby saves a set of tabs as a collection you reopen with one click. Its page shows an update on October 26, 2026. Tab Snooze answers a different question: reopen a tab at the time you choose, instead of leaving it open “just in case.” Its latest version dates from September 2026. Workona organizes work into spaces. I found no recent announcement about its future, so check its latest release date before you build your system on it.

For capture, SingleFile keeps a complete copy of a page, which matters when an offer, a contract or a study can vanish overnight. Readwise Highlighter only makes sense if you already use Readwise. Its page shows an update on September 24, 2026, but without Readwise it does nothing for you.

I don’t keep text-selection extensions for images, such as Project Naptha, whose last update dates from January 2026. They can help, but no recurring need justifies them for me, and an extension without a recurring need doesn’t earn a permanent place.

The one-week test

The action I’m suggesting fits in a week. Pick three extensions you can’t describe, or whose use you can’t remember from last month. Disable them in your browser’s extensions page, without removing them. Then work normally for seven days.

If nobody missed them, remove them. If a page stops working, re-enable the right one with one click: you have just learned what it really did, and you no longer have to guess. Disabling before removing protects you from mistakes and turns a doubt into an answer.

The test has a limit, and you should know it. An extension you use once a month can’t be judged in seven days. Note it in your list with its role, disable it outside those moments, and don’t count it as useless just because it stays quiet. Archiving and checking tools often look like this.

When a page breaks, suspect an extension before the site

The most common mistake, when a page misbehaves, is blaming the site. A form that won’t submit, a video that won’t start, a menu that disappears: the cause is often an extension that modifies the page, and you never connected the two. Before reinstalling anything or switching browsers, test the extensions one at a time, starting with the ones that touch that site.

The Browsers lesson describes how to isolate the culprit in a few steps, without uninstalling everything. That method saves more time than a new browser does.

What this changes for you

Tonight, open the extensions page and count them. Choose three you can’t describe, disable them for the week, and keep only what you don’t miss. In seven days, you’ll know which ones you keep, and why.

The full grid by role, the hygiene routines and the diagnosis method are in the Browsers lesson of the Windows module. If your real problem is the number of tabs, the article Open tabs: the attention debt you don’t see explains what each open tab costs you. And for the base of your machine before anything else, the free guide to 10 Windows settings.

Sources

Figures and status checked on November 1, 4 and 5, 2026. Update dates are those shown on the Chrome Web Store pages on that date.

See the 14 sources for this article

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