Chrome extension can improve your writing, speed up your workflow, and help you brainstorm topics and ideas for great content. Brainstorm new topics for content, improve your writing, or even edit an existing article to improve its quality.
I am a big fan of Chrome extensions. They help me be more productive, write faster, and some even spark my creativity. In this article, I share useful extensions that I use for writing better content.
Microsoft Edge
This is a post about the best Chrome extensions for writers, but in fact, I don’t use Chrome. The truth is that Google’s browser is a resource hog and by 2021 I found it impossible to work with efficiently.
I switched to Microsoft’s Edge browser, which is built on the open-source Chromium project (the same code used to build Google’s browser) and the RAM on my Mac is no longer at maximum and the fan has stopped constantly whirring.
And if you remember Microsoft browsers from the days of Internet Explorer, don’t worry. Edge is nothing like that. It has almost all of the capabilities of Chrome, just without the bloat. And you can use all of the Chrome extensions you already like.
And by using Edge, you have one less extension to install. Read more about that later.
Grammarly
Most writers and bloggers have heard of Grammarly but I’ll add it here just in case it slipped by you.
Grammarly is a grammar and spelling proofreading tool. Think of it as your own algorithmic spotter of mistakes and poor writing, a sort of Artificial Intelligence (AI) editor, if you will. It's one of the most popular browser extensions for writers, at least for the ones that write online.
Wordtune
A very cool Chrome extension that lets you “tune” your writing. Change sentences and remove adverbs, adjectives, and verbs on the fly. Find more than just the right words, but the right way to use them in a sentence. Write in an easy-to-read style, in flowing prose, and with attention-grabbing titles. Rewrite your writing.
Currently, Wordtune does not work with WordPress but it does work with other writing apps like Google Docs and ProWritingAi.
Copy.ai
Before anyone bemoans the death of copywriting and worries that the machines are taking our jobs, let me assure you that this tool is not a replacement for a good copywriter. Instead, it’s a tool for generating ideas and helping create outlines or prompts. Copywriters and writers can use the suggestions as sparks of inspiration for their blog post intros, sales pages, social media posts, website headers, and even Facebook Ads.
Want to generate a few ideas for Instagram Carousel Posts (the latest buzz in social media circles)? How about creating copy that your audience can relate to? Would you like help in crafting hooks for your content, YouTube videos, or book promotions? You can do it all here.
The Chrome Extension is easier to use than the website. The faster access to the tool and the stripped-down interface makes it easy to brainstorm and get quick copy ideas for whatever I’m working on.
ProWritingAid
ProWritingAid is a style editor, grammar and spelling checker, and writing optimisation tool. It’s a one-stop suite of writing and editing tools that can help turn boring, terse content into easy-to-read, flowing prose.
Well, it might not be good enough to turn a bad writer into a modern Dickens, but ProWritingAid will certainly help improve your work.
The software comes as a web-based app and a desktop app. Both of those require a paid plan (well worth it, by the way). The Chrome browser plugin is free and offers many of the tools of the paid software, albeit with less depth of features.
The extension highlights passive verbs, suggests readability enhancements, and finds spelling mistakes and grammatical errors. A contextual thesaurus makes suggestions for word substitutions (I love this feature).
Change your language preferences based on country and writing style. There’s also a text expansion feature which gives you the power of snippets in your writing. Add chunks of commonly used text, URLs and email addresses with shortcuts. It’s a huge time-saver.
Note: Snippets requires a ProWritingAid Premium account.
Speak It Alternative – Microsoft Edge's Read Aloud Feature
Many writers and content creators use the Speak It Chrome app to enable their computer to read text and website pages out loud.
Why would you want to have your computer read text back to you? Well, sometimes it's easier to hear how a piece of writing flows or catch mistakes when you hear it out loud. And having “someone else” read it back is better than us reading it. We all know how easy it is to miss our own grammatical errors.
If you're already using Edge (which I recommend you start using) then you can remove one extension from the list as the browser already has a text-to-speech engine built in.
Of course, Speak It is available for Edge but all you have to do to read aloud a web page is hold Shift + Command + U and Chrome will instantly read back the page. It's much faster than Speak It and won't add any unnecessary bloat to your browser.
It's worth keeping in mind that extensions will slow down your browser and your computer. Some are inefficient, others are badly coded and buggy. But in general, the more Chrome apps installed, the slower your browsing experience will inevitably be. Microsoft Edge performs better than Chrome though, so there's another reason to switch.
Evernote Web Clipper
Evernote Clipper lets you quickly save text, images, outlines, or entire webpages to your Evernote account.
If you're a write who likes to save lots of bits and pieces off the internet for research, this might be a huge time saving tool for you. Save research articles, image files, and other materials that you might want to use for your own work.
Evernote is an app for capturing ideas, taking notes, and organizing your work. It's used by millions of people. The Evernote web clipper is one of the best Chrome extensions in my browser.
Hunter.io
Freelance writers and bloggers are always on the lookout for new opportunities, people to collaborate with, and websites to write guest posts and get backlinks from. These are all important parts of growing your freelance writing business. But finding the right contacts on websites can be a pain. That’s where Hunter’s Chrome Extension can save you time and stop you from ending up in the spam folder.
When you land on the website of a prospective client or partner, click the hunter icon in the Chrome bar and you’ll get a list of email addresses associated with the domain.
Hunter shows you where it scraped the email addresses from and how reliable they are. Save them to a prospecting list for your outreach campaigns. Hunter even offers a free email outreach platform for this exact purpose.
Google Docs Offline
The internet has brought us so much in terms of opportunities and access to knowledge. But it can also be a distraction at the best of times. I’m aware that as long as I am connected to the internet, I’ll always be tempted to avoid writing and start browsing. Sometimes I go places where I can disconnect completely in an attempt to get some good stretches of writing done. Other times, I don’t have access to the internet, like when I’m on a plane or in a country with bad broadband connections.
Luckily, for people that compose and edit in Google Docs, there’s a solution to the problem of where to write and back up your work when there’s no internet connection.
Google Docs Offline is a Chrome plugin that lets you work on Docs, Sheets, and the other applications in real time in your browser without a connection. When you next have a connection, the content will sync with the cloud and you can continue working as normal. It’s genius.
Buzzsumo
Struggling to find new topics to write about? Do you find it hard to know what kind of article will go viral or even generate a decent number of clicks? What’s trending and what are people sharing on social media.
Buzzsumo gives you the solution and answers to the above, and more besides. Whenever you find an article that you like, click the Buzzsumo extension and get statistics on engagement across the social platforms, the number of links, people who shared the content, and other useful bits of information. You also get quick links to the website’s most shared content and analysis tools. A huge time saver.
Take advantage of Chrome's extensions features. Turn your browser into a supercharged, word processing and research machine that’s fast and easy to use. Many extensions can save you time, enhance your writing, and even save you some money. I use these tools on a daily basis, and I recommend them because they make my life easier.
