Chrome is a resource hog, though Google has tried hard to reduce the
RAM usage in the latest versions. Apart from RAM usage, there’s a
never-ending problem of too many tabs open in Chrome. In the past, we
had shared how you can manage them like a Pro and also showed a Chrome extension that is probably the best to manage multiple tabs. But, do you still find yourself drowning in the sea of open tabs? Drowning in the sea of Chrome Tabs
So, I’d like to show you a Chrome extension that will definitely let
you easily and effectively manage multiple tabs and will give you some
other cool features that will enhance your Chrome experience.
Effectively Manage Multiple Tabs
Google Chrome creates a separate process for each new tab. Thus,
you’ll find more RAM usage if seen collectively. Closing unwanted tabs
will automatically reduce the RAM usage. But, what to do when you got
15-20 tabs open? You’re not gonna go through all the tabs and see if
they are really needed.
Here’s where Tabr
comes in. Tabr displays all your tabs in a bird’s eye view (thumbnail
view) so that you can quickly go through tabs and close the unwanted
ones. Here’s how it looks.
It can also be useful to switch through tabs. Also, if you got
multiple windows open then you can see the tabs open in those windows
too. Thus, you can easily save RAM by closing unwanted tabs open in
current and other open windows. Now, let’s have a look at some notable
features that Tabr has to offer.
Tab Archiving
This is the similar feature to what The Great Suspender
provides. It suspends your tabs or archives tabs (according to the
extension) that are open for a long period of time. Thus, saving RAM.
Now, you can manually archive tabs that you think you won’t use for
some time. Or, you can let Tabr manage that for. You just have to set
the time period after which the tab will be archived. Just hit the
auto-archive and set your time.
Archive Sessions
Let’s say you have a specific set of websites that you always access
for some particular work. Or you want to quickly save all the websites
that are currently open in Chrome. So, in such case what you can do is
archive this particular session of all open links.
Tabr lets you easily manage these sessions. You just have to hit the Archive Sessions tab and all the links will be saved.
You can add a name to the session. By default, you get the Date as
the name of the session. You can search through sessions. Sessions open
in a new window. And of course, you can delete them.
Features Worth Mentioning
A cool feature is that you can combine all the tabs open in different
windows into one window. Also, if you want to transfer a tab from
another window into your current window then you can do it with a simple
drag and drop in the extension window itself. It’s a precisely
developed extension for managing tabs and it works effectively.
Whether you are tethering your phone or you’re lucky enough to have LTE built into your Chromebook, you probably have a data cap. Some careful planning will make your Chromebook useful without blowing through your data plan.
Don’t be sad just because you have a data cap | kjarrett
Begin With the End in Mind – Use Offline Apps
Whenever possible, search for an offline alternative for your apps. Both Gmail and Google Docs have offline equivalents. When you are on a free Wi-Fi connection, launch these apps and load your data into them. Pocket is a great resource for this. Add long web pages you want to read to Pocket. Then launch the Pocket app on your Chromebook and it will download the pages.
For content that doesn’t work in Pocket, try putting it in Evernote. Evernote works offline if you install the Android version along with Android Runtime for Chrome (ARC). Clip the pages or resources you want and then sync it with your Chromebook. You’ll have that content offline again.
Want more Android Apps? ARC Welder lets you run most Android apps on your Chromebook.
Use an Extension Manager and Create an “Optimized Bandwidth” Group
Chrome extensions customize your Chrome and Chromebook experience. Some of them also use bandwidth. For example, I have a grammar check that sends everything I type back to the servers. When I was tethering off my iPhone, I saw a huge spike in traffic even though all I was doing was typing a letter.
It’s not always easy to know which extensions uses extra data, so I use the minimal necessary to get the job done on a metered connection. The bonus is minimal extensions save my battery. My preferred extension manager is Simple Extension Manager. I right click, pick my Optimized Bandwidth Group and I’m ready to go.
Chrome has its own Flash player and PDF viewer. Clicking on a link could download a huge file or animation you don’t need. From the Omnibox type chrome://settings/contentand scroll down to Plugins. Select Let me choose when to run plugin content.
When a webpage has a plugin like Flash, you can control+click and run the player just on the content you want. That prevents it from loading automatically. Some sites don’t like this extra step. For those sites use the Manage exceptions option. Click the box for Manage exceptions and put in the website you want to load automatically and the pick Allow on the right-hand side. I keep this setting on all the time because pages load faster for me.
Chrome lets you turn off images in that same area by scrolling down to Images and Do not show any images. The web doesn’t quite look the same without images, but it will save you data.
Use the Data Saver (Beta) Extension
Google developed a Data Saver extension just for these situations. We covered this extensionbefore. With a Chromebook on a metered connection, this is one of the best ways you can keep your browsing fast and lean. Since you can’t switch to an optimized browser like Opera, this is the next best thing.
If you keep multiple tabs open on your Chromebook, those tabs could be updating in the background. That’s costing you bandwidth. Two extensions I use are The Great Suspenderand Tab Wrangler. Either of these extensions (don’t use both at once) will suspend an inactive tab. This prevents it from updating and wasting both bandwidth and battery.
You start your day at work by opening your inbox, then check the news, some social media and click some links based on your intrigue on the topic. Before you know it, your Chrome browser is filled with tabs which outnumber the embarrassing moments the Kardashians have had on reality TV. So, how do you keep a tab on tabs?
Losing tabs in Chrome? Don’t lose your mind over it! Shutterstock
1. Tab Manager
Tab Manager is a good extension which does exactly what it sounds like. The default view gives you an icon overview of all the open tabs within the current open Window as well as other windows. There is also a search bar from where you can quickly get to a tab that you can’t otherwise find. To its right are options to Add Window, Pin Tabs, Delete Tabs and Change layout.
If you do not like the icon view layout, you need simply to click on the layout icon on the bottom right to get a different view. This view has more details about each tab with the ever-present search bar and the options to its right (like pinning and deleting tabs) also present. Right above these are also options to close the current tab and open a new one.
Where this extension excels, though, is in the ability to search and show tabs from multiple windows of Chrome. Whether you’ve got 2 (or more) windows of Chrome open, it will show you the list of all the tabs open and all you have to do is click on the tab you want to jump to and it takes you there effortlessly.
I usually like to keep 2 Chrome windows open, one for work-related tabs and the other for social media and personal mails. With Tab Manager, you can see all the tabs from all your open Chrome Windows, all in one place.
2. TooManyTabs for Chrome
Another great extension to try out is TooManyTabs, which we had spoken about a while ago. The advantage of this extension is that visually it is much nicer than the previous one and gives a card-like view which makes it easy to identify which tab is which. The whole look can be customized as well, plus there are nice options for sorting different tabs like Sort by Name, Sort by Web Address and Sort by Creation Time.
There is also a tab count on the icon itself which will always give you a quick idea of the number of tabs open.
It also gives a You are hereidentifier so you know where your current tab is, in the myriad of all the other open tabs within Chrome. Additionally, hitting the yellow arrow next to the top of the tab moves it to the empty Suspended Tabs section on the right. This feature is akin to pinning a tab, which temporarily closes that tab to be accessed at a later stage.
Although this extension won’t work in showing you all the open tabs across multiple windows of Chrome, it does have a nice option to to export tabs to Firefox, if you so wish to. This can be found in the Options menu of the extension and your existing tabs in Firefox don’t get affected when you do this.
There is also an option to back up your tabs as a simple text file to Google Drive, something that I’ve personally never really found useful, to be honest.
Quick Tabs is a lot like Tab Manager in the way it looks and handles tabs. You get all your open tabs aligned in neat rows with a search box at the top and a nice addition of Recently Closedsection at the bottom, showing the tabs you had closed recently. This is the same feature which Google Chrome also gives by default, but you don’t need to go hunting for it in Chrome’s Menu for it.
Although this extension shows the number of tabs across multiple Chrome windows, it doesn’t show it as a separate section like Tab Manager. However, it does show a tab count on the icon itself, reflecting the number of tabs open across all Chrome windows. Right-click on the icon and hit Options and you will notice some interesting choices that the developer has included.
Not all of the keyboard shortcuts might work but the developer is working on getting around the default keyboard shortcuts of Chrome to make this extension better.
Avoid Clutter
These were some of the options that we think can help any user keep a tab of their open tabs in Google Chrome. How about you? If you can think of better solutions to avoid clutter while browsing, do meet us in the comments section below.
Given a chance, I am sure most of you would love to run your favorite Android apps on your personal Windows computer. Well, there’s always been a way to get that done, but it required installation of the entire Android SDK on programming tools like Eclipse or NetBeans. Used to be complicated process, trust me. Not anymore though.
Recently, Google came out with a developer tool called ARC Welder for Chrome that can run and test Android apps directly on the Chrome browser. Besides PCs, the ARC Welder appworks on Chromebooks as well, and thus you can run Android apps on your Chromebook.
All you need is the APK file of the app you wish to run.
Getting Started: Obtaining the APK Files
The APK file of an app can be obtained from one of the many mirrors online. Just search for the app along with the keyword ‘APK Download’ and you will see plenty of mirrors that will allow you to directly download the APK file to your computer. Furthermore, you can use apps like ES File Explorer to transfer the APKs of installed apps to your computer and then test them using the ARC Tool.
So in this article, I will show you how to install and configure the ARC Welder tool to test your app without any hassle.
Running Apps on ARC Welder
After you have the APK file of the app you wish to test on your computer, open the Chrome App Store and download the ARC Welder Tool. It can take some time for the app to download and install, as some additional files will be downloaded to resolve dependencies. But don’t worry, everything will be done automatically by the installer and once installed, the ARC icon will appear in the Chrome App Drawer.
After you open the app, it will ask you to select a folder on the computer. This folder will be used by the tool to save the APK files while they’re loaded in the memory. Having done that, the app will ask you to import an APK file to the tool. Click on the plus sign and import any APK that you have downloaded in your computer.
ARC will ask how you want to launch the app. Select the orientation that you think will work best for the app. Like if you’re launching Facebook or Candy Crush Saga, the portrait mode would be the ideal choice.
The next thing you should choose is whether you want to launch the app in tablet mode or mobile mode, and finally, select if you need clipboard access. With clipboard access, you will be able to input text in the app using your keyboard.
Finally, when everything is in place click Launch App and the ARC Tool will run the app in a new Chrome window. You can now interact with the app and work on it just like it was running on Android.
Some Points to Remember
Here are some points you must remember while using the ARC Welder tool.
The tool can run just one app at a given time and when you load a second app, the first app is removed from the memory.
You cannot run apps that require Android services. Like the YouTube app, which requires Play Services to sign you in – this won’t work in your Chrome browser because you will not be able to access your account.
You can play games on these apps, but make sure that the data progress is saved online in your account. Any data saved locally will be removed each time you unmount the app.
Keep these points in mind while testing apps on the ARC tool. I was able to run ES File Explorer, Candy Crush Saga, and Brain Wars. However Spotify never launched and was stuck on a white screen. Therefore, the tool might not work for every app and you might have to wait for the next version update.
Conclusion
That was pretty much everything about the ARC Welder tool and how you can use it to test Android apps directly on your computer without installing the hefty Android SDK. The tool also works on Chromebooks without any issues. So try it out today.
It’s been a few years now since Facebook has gotten a major redesign. Facebook updates its mobile apps pretty frequently, but the main website you access in a browser on your PC or Mac continues going untouched. It leaves a lot to be desired in terms of both looks and function. If you use Google Chrome, it doesn’t have to be this way.
Chrome’s broad extension support opens it up to a number of methods for tweaking Facebook’s design and adding new features when you’re using the website. They’re all free to install as well. If you want a better Facebook experience, it’s worth giving these extensions a go.
Photo Zoom
The Photo Zoom for Facebook extension enlarges the various small thumbnail photos scattered around Facebook as you hover over them. They stretch to the height and width of the browser window itself if necessary, so it’s easier to see someone’s profile photo or otherwise small image without having to click it.
It doesn’t seem to work for photos in photo albums or anything that opens in a viewer overlaying the page. The extension mainly shows previews for photos that, when clicked, load a new page. Otherwise, it lags or doesn’t load at all, but for photos that the extension does support it proves to be extremely convenient to hover over a small thumbnail and view the full size.
Chat Privacy
The Facebook Chat Privacy extension will save you from an enormous amount of socially awkward situations. It merely blocks your friends on Facebook from seeing when you have read their messages, allowing you to read and ignore every message that comes your way if your heart desires to. Of course you could always skip that step and bulk delete everything.
This works regardless of whether the people you’re chatting with have the extension installed and even if the friends are using a different browser or platform. If you have it and a friend doesn’t, you are still able to see if he read your message but he can’t see when you read his.Enjoy the blissful privacy.
Tip: There is a workaround for this. If you’re on the Facebook website and click to see your full messages inbox, the small check mark next to the conversation name is still visible when you read messages. Most people don’t take the time to go digging for that though, so the extension still holds value.
Facebook Themes
The Facebook Themes extension allows you to personalize your Facebook profile by choosing one of a variety of different themes available. The themes for selection are very broad, including everything from music to various cartoons to holidays. It applies a background image to your profile page and makes the content semi-transparent. Due to Facebook’s restrictive nature, everything blends in fairly nice with the layout.
Bear in mind that the theme is only visible to you as someone who has the extension installed. It does not change the look of your Facebook profile for your other friends.
The themes also require that you quickly install a separate extension called Fairshare and asks you to do so upon download for the first time. For whatever reason, this other extension is what enables the theme gallery to function.
Facebook ReFresh
Facebook ReFresh ditches Facebook’s current News Feed layout in favor of something that takes better advantage of widescreen displays. The extension removes the sidebar and online user list and fills the space with multiple columns of News Feed posts as far across as your browser window is wide.
The result looks a bit similar to Pinterest, with the posts in your feed tiled across your computer display without any alignment relative to each other. It provides for a nice effect and arguably makes better use of your screen. Plus, it’s easier to skim through posts from friends and pages without endlessly scrolling.
Facebook Chat Layout
Facebook Chat Layout spruces up the built-in messenger on Facebook’s website. The Chrome extension decks out the sidebar and your conversation windows with the theme of your choice. It includes eight themes: Rilakkuma, Hello Kitty, One Piece, Doraemon, Shin Chan, Domokun, Minion Tarepanda. They’re all cartoons so the themes aren’t for everyone, but they make your conversations pop out on the page a bit more.
The extension also promises that a theme designer is coming soon so you have more creative control over the themes. It’s not clear when the developer will add that feature, but it should make for better customization.
News Feed Eradicator
Sometimes you have something you want to tell the world, but don’t necessarily want to see what the world’s up to. Post a quick blurb and be on your way, maybe catch up with the universe later. Enter News Feed Eradicator, an extension that completely removes your News Feed from view, but still allows you to post whatever you want.
In place of your News Feed is a randomly generated quote, often with the intent of keeping you productive. If you’re the type of person that can’t shake your social networks no matter how badly you want to stay focused, this extension will come in handy. You won’t be able to get lost in your News Feed commenting on and liking what your friends have to say. It’s just you and an inspirational quote.
Then, a couple of months back, Rdio officially launched in my country (India) and they brought 32 million songs along with a really good English song collection. The best part was that the premium, ad-free, offline downloads version only costs around $2. I jumped on it.
And so far, Rdio has been great. After taking ads out of the equation, I’m listening to a lot more music, discovering new albums every week, something I always wanted to do (this week it’sPet Sounds by The Beach Boys, thanks to the latest Inquisitive podcast). Look at me now Ma, I’m 23 and I’m actually paying to get my music legally. All my 0.00000001 cents, artists, you’re welcome.
If you too have switched to Rdio and prefer to listen to Rdio via Chrome (extensions!woohoo!) instead of the desktop app (the desktop app is really barebones, doesn’t support plug-ins like Spotify does, or even Chromecast) read on to find out how to totally pimp out your Rdio music listening experience.
1. Rdio Lyrics Extension
Rdio Lyrics is a really simple lyrics app that integrates lyrics right in the Now Playing screen by replacing the album art with lyrics. It doesn’t show time-synced lyrics and frankly, it’s a bit too hard to scroll but there’s a good reason to install this extension (more on that in point 5).
2. Play Music Lyrics Fetcher Extension
Play Music Lyrics Fetcher is the lyrics extension for most of you out there. It supports a boatload of music streaming services including Rdio. It shows up as a popup, looks great, is nimble and best of all, has Musixmatch like time-synced lyrics.
3. Rdio Mini Player
If you’re tired of going to the Rdio tab every time you want to change the song or see what song’s playing, try this extension. It will show a popup mini player from the extension bar and will show native Chrome notifications for song changes with Previous and Next track action buttons.
Pin the Rdio tab: I usually pin the Rdio tab along with Gmail and Messenger so I don’t need to go looking for it. Using the keyboard shortcut Cmd+2 (Ctrl+2 for Windows), I can get to the second pinned tab easily.
4. Assigning Hotkeys for Global Control
Using a Chrome extension called Musicality, you can control playback for a web based player using self-defined keyboard hotkeys. This is especially great for a Mac or Windows laptop that has media keys for Play/Pause, Previous and Next track. Global hotkey support means you can control Rdio playback from anywhere. It takes away one of the last good reason I had for installing the Rdio desktop app.
Musically supports many music streaming websites along with Rdio, like Spotify and YouTube.
5. Chomecasting Rdio
For some reason, Chromecasting Rdio from Chrome has gotten buggy recently. I hope that will be fixed soon. So I usually start Chromecasting from my phone and continue from Rdio web app. The great thing about Rdio is that you can use a Rdio client on every other device to control playback at the main device. So I can control Rdio music playing on my PC from my Phone.
Another thing I do is just cast the whole tab instead of using Rdio’s built-in feature. This means I get a far less cool screen to look at but there’s an upside. And when I switch to the Now Playingscreen, boom, I’ve got song lyrics on my TV.
This is my #lifehack for getting lyrics to the big screen via Rdio. Remember that lame sounding Rdio Lyrics extension? This is where it shines. I’ve wanted lyrics to current playing Rdio song on the TV for a long time and right now this is the only way to do it.
Scrobbling Rdio
A friend of mine said I should be scrobbling to Last.fm. So I started doing it. I’m not exactly sure what I’m going to do with all that data, but I’ll figure something out (if you have any ideas, leave them in the comments below). Scrobbling Rdio to Last.fm is as simple as going to the settings and connecting your Last.fm account.
What’s Your Rdio Hot Tip?
Do you use Rdio? Have a cool Rdio tip to share? Let us know down in the comments below.
Have you ever created an online account using a mobile browser? Well, if you have, you must be well aware of the issues one can face while filling all the fields of a web form on a mere 4” display and an even smaller keyboard. I often used to skip the task on my phone and waited to be in front of a computer. It’s just easier to fill in all the information, including address and organization and create an account on a PC.
Filling forms is never an easy task – Shutterstock
But no matter how far you try to run, these things always catch up to you one day. And when they do, it can be a real pain. So to ease the work load while filling these web forms online, you can take the help from your browsers, and Android apps where you can save all your different identities and then fill the info on any web page with a single tap.
You can save an average of 130 key-strokes and 4 minutes while filling these forms automatically on Android, but the peace of mind you get when everything is error-free and automated is priceless.
Let’s have a look at how we can get these features on Chrome and Firefox.
Auto-filling Forms on Chrome
Chrome comes with an auto-fill feature on both Android and desktop browsers, and if you have them in sync, you are in for a treat. You can open the Chrome browser on your desktop and create a personal identity. These personal identities are later used to fill the web forms. To create a new personal identity, open the Chrome settings and look for the option Passwords and Forms. Here, click on the option that says, Manage Auto Fill Settings. If you are on a Chrome browser, click this link to open the settings directly.
Here you can create new profiles and even save credit card information for shopping websites. Click on Add a New Street Address to enter the data. Every change you make on the desktop will be synced to the browser. However, if you wish to save the profile directly on the Android’s Chrome browser, open the browser settings and navigate to Auto Fill Forms.
That’s all, create your profile and save the settings. Next time you are on a web page that requires filling a form, the browser will recognize the moment you select the first field and give you the option to fill the form directly. You can create as many different profiles as you want and Chrome will show all of them while filling a form.
Auto-filling Forms on Firefox and Dolphin
Firefox and Dolphin don’t come with this built-in feature like Chrome, and thus we have to use an app called RoboForm to fill online web forms. After you install RoboForm on your phone, create an account and head over to the Identity section to create a new profile. RoboForm is an app that is used to remember passwords and auto-fill them in the web page, but it can be used to fill forms as well.
After creating the profile, head over to the RoboForm settings page and install the add-on for Firefox and Dolphin depending upon the browser you are using. After the add-on in installed, you can access the settings directly and fill the web forms automatically.
Note: RoboForm also comes with a built-in browser if you don’t want to use the add-ons and would like to use the app directly.
Conclusion
Well, I just made filling out forms on Android easy for you. I am sure you will love the feature the next time you see a web page with dozens of fields to be filled. Chrome auto-fill settings are easy to maintain, but RoboFrom gives more detailed profile creation and provides robust form-filling options. Try them out and share your views with us.
Chromebooks are awesome. Google is selling them like hot cakes. But using a Chromebook as your primary laptop comes with its own set of challenges. Take Dropbox, for instance. Many of us have Dropbox accounts that let us sync files to all our devices – except our Chromebooks. Sure, you can access the Dropbox website, but that’s an extra step. So how do you go about making access to Dropbox easier and more organized on a Chromebook?
The answer: File System for Dropbox App. With this app, your Dropbox files show up as another volume in the Chrome File Manager. Easy peasy. Let’s check out the steps.
Install the App
The app is available from the Chrome web store. This app isn’t the same as the official Dropbox App. You need to follow the link or search for File System for Dropbox.
Configure Access to Your Dropbox
File System for Dropbox shows up as a volume in your File Manager, so you must mountyour Dropbox account.
After you click Mount, you’ll sign in to your Dropbox account.
Fortunately, the app supports two-factor authentication (I highly recommend it). If you have two-factor turned on, you’ll enter your security code next.
Head on over to the Files app on your Chromebook and you’ll see a new icon that saysDropbox and your Dropbox username. If you have lots of files, it might take a while for the files to show up. From there you can drag and drop files between your Chromebook and your Dropbox account.
Glitches and Annoyances
Every so often the app asks you to re-authenticate your Dropbox account. The author explains this in the documentation – the APIs time out. If you think you’ll want to save files directly to your Dropbox, mount your account before you begin work. Another annoyance is you can’t download directly to your Chromebook. You need to download to your Chromebook drive and then copy it over.
Conclusion
You can always download the files you need to your Chromebook from the Dropbox website. That makes native Chromebook apps and functions harder to use. If you use Dropbox, you’ve already installed it on your Mac or PC. Every other Dropbox platform supports a native file system, so don’t leave your Chromebook out of the family.
