These extensions for Mozilla’s browser can help boost your productivity, reclaim privacy and automate mundane tasks.
Firefox isn’t the most popular browser in the world — that honor now goes to Google Chrome — but it still has an ardent following. And after slipping in recent years, it has been on something of a rebound this year. On top of that, Mozilla made a big deal about the release of the latest version – Firefox Quantum – which the company says is twice as fast as the browser was earlier this year. (It’s available for download if you haven’t tried it yet, and want to.)
While Firefox is a well-rounded browser in its own right, its capabilities can be expanded by installing any of a wealth of extensions that can boost performance and improve users’ workflow. We scoured Firefox’s repository for add-ons and selected those with the most users and top reviews. These are 14 of the best Firefox add-ons you can use to turn Firefox into a powerhouse.
The iMacros for Firefox add-on can be customized to fill out forms, initiate password requests and automate other online activities.
The iMacros add-on automates many of the repetitive tasks users encounter online. If you’re tired of endless forms, password requests and other things that can bring browsing to a halt, iMacros can save you a lot of time and aggravation. Macros can be created for a variety of purposes to simplify browsing and speed users through otherwise mundane tasks. Some of the most popular uses of this free add-on include filling out personal forms, initiating logins, automating downloads and uploads, extracting data to a CSV file, testing site performance and social bookmark scripting.
Grammarly helps users write clearly without mistakes, and with greater impact.
Grammarly is a tool that could help you avoid embarrassing grammatical or spelling errors in your most important communications and documents. The add-on requires users to set up an account, but it’s free for those who need fewer than 400 grammar/spelling checks per month. More than that requires a $140 annual subscription. Grammarly can also detect contextual errors, commonly confused words and subject-verb agreement issues. The add-on works on many popular sites such as Gmail, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, but Google Drive and Google Docs are not supported.
Awesome Screenshot Plus enables users to capture and annotate images.
If your current default screenshot options are too rudimentary, you should give Awesome Screenshot Plus a try. The add-on lets you capture an entire web page or any portion of it, and then annotate the image with rectangles, circles, arrows, lines and text. Awesome Screenshot Plus (suggested $4 donation for its use) can also blur sensitive information so you can limit what’s saved in the final image. The company behind the add-on recently introduced its own image hosting and sharing service by the same name; you can just save the image directly to your computer if option isn’t needed.
Xmarks Sync can help users organize bookmarks across multiple browsers and devices.
If you use multiple devices that run different browsers, keeping a handle on bookmarks can be a pain. Xmarks Sync can rectify this problem by backing up and synchronizing your bookmarks so they’re readily available on Firefox, Internet Explorer, Safari (macOS only) and Chrome. The add-on requires you to create an account, but the service is free for desktop users. Xmarks also sells a paid plan for $1 per month for use on iOS, BlackBerry and Android devices.
Gmail Notifier is a simple but effective add-on that will help users focus on the most important messages.
Email overload is no laughing matter. It can disrupt your day and overwhelm your ability to focus on the task at hand. The Gmail Notifier add-on won’t solve all of your email problems, but it can help you streamline how and when you are alerted to incoming emails. The add-on supports multiple Gmail accounts, and you can customize it to receive alerts when emails arrive under specific labels you’ve already created in Gmail. With Gmail Notifier, you no longer need to keep open a browser tab showing email messages; let this add-on alert you to the messages that matter most.
Evernote Web Clipper brings many of Evernote’s core features directly into your Firefox browser.
Evernote is one of the most popular web-clipping and note-taking apps in the cloud, and the Evernote Web Clipper add-on brings the app’s most popular features directly to Firefox. Users can clip pages and articles to be saved in Evernote, annotate screenshots to highlight sections on a page and share pages with colleagues to get feedback or initiate collaboration. The extension also enables users to search for related notes in their Evernote account, set reminders for clipped notes and customize their experience with settings and keyboard shortcuts.
DownThemAll enables users to organize downloads and quickly retrieve a large number of files.
The DownThemAll add-on is a free, open-source download manager that claims to increase download speeds by up to 400%. Users can quickly download all the links and/or images on a specific page and customize the tool by filtering for specific files or file types. DownThemAll can also spider an entire page in a single click, automatically download the files you’re after and automatically rename files according to your needs.
The Amazon Assistant add-on brings some of the most popular features of Amazon.com directly to Firefox. The shopping tool will proactively show ratings and prices for products Firefox users are browsing and display comparable products when further research is merited. Amazon Assistant will also automatically notify users when a new daily deal begins and provide updates when orders ship and are delivered. Users can also access wish lists and search for a specific product with a single click. Amazon Assistant is a rebranding and refresh of Amazon’s recently defunct 1Button App.
The Amazon Assistant add-on adds some of the most popular shopping features of Amazon.com to Firefox.
DuckDuckGo is a search engine that protects privacy by not tracking queries, IP addresses or other online activities.
DuckDuckGo is a search engine that prioritizes users’ privacy by not tracking queries, IP addresses or other online activities. Persistently private search is at the core of DuckDuckGo’s Firefox add-on, but the tool also enables users to block advertising trackers and force sites to use encrypted connections when available. Instead of delivering more targeted, and perhaps relevant, results to users based on search history and other behavioral indicators, DuckDuckGo deliberately shows the same search results for a given query. DuckDuckGo is a small player in the competitive search engine market, but it has been an available built-in search engine option on Safari and Firefox since 2014.
LastPass acts as a password vault for all of those difficult-to-remember logins.
Passwords and logins are designed to confirm our identities and secure personal data, but few people can or want to remember all of the passwords required during a typical day. By creating a master password and account with LastPass, you can safely encrypt and back up all of your passwords and logins in one place.
