Most browser extensions are junk. They slow down your browser, sell your data, or solve problems that do not exist. But a handful of them are genuinely useful — the kind you install once and forget about until you use someone else’s computer and wonder how they live without them.

I have tried probably a hundred extensions over the years. I currently run exactly six. Here are the ones that survived the purge.

uBlock Origin — The Only Ad Blocker You Need

Blocks ads, trackers, and malware domains. Uses almost no memory compared to other ad blockers. It also blocks YouTube ads — including the ones that play mid-video. If you install one extension from this list, make it this one.

Bitwarden — Password Manager That Just Works

Remembers all your passwords, generates strong ones, and fills them in automatically. Free for personal use. Syncs across all your devices. The difference between “let me try to remember which password I used for this site” and just logging in instantly is hard to overstate once you have lived with it.

OneTab — Save Your Sanity (and RAM)

You know when you have forty-seven tabs open and your laptop fan sounds like a jet engine? OneTab converts all your open tabs into a single list with one click. You can restore them individually or all at once. It cuts Chrome’s memory usage dramatically. I use it multiple times a day during research-heavy work.

Dark Reader — Save Your Eyes

Generates dark mode for every website — including ones that do not have a built-in dark theme. Adjustable brightness, contrast, and sepia. You can toggle it per-site. Some sites look a little funky with it on, but for reading long articles at night, it is a game-changer.

Bypass Paywalls Clean — Read the News

This one is not in the Chrome Web Store — you have to install it manually from GitHub. It lets you read articles behind soft paywalls on sites like The New York Times, Washington Post, and many others. Not for hard paywalls that require a login, but for the ones that block you after a few free articles, it works.

LanguageTool — Better Than Built-in Spellcheck

Grammar and style checker that catches things Google’s spellcheck misses. Works in multiple languages. The free version covers basic grammar and spelling. The premium version adds style suggestions. I use the free tier and it catches enough to be worth the install.

Six extensions. No bloat. My browser runs fast, my passwords are not “password123,” and I can read the news without hitting a paywall every other article. That covers about 90% of what I actually need from browser add-ons.