10 Best Chrome extensions you need if you're a web developer in 2024

Extensions are features that improve your browsing experience and boost your productivity. You can find extensions on your browser's toolbar or just click on the icon that resembles a piece of a puzzle. 

There are hundreds of extensions across different web browsers, and today, I've whipped up a list of the ten best Chrome extensions for developers.

1. Wappalyzer

Whether it's identifying the content management system (CMS) a website is built on, pinpointing the framework being used, or uncovering the JavaScript libraries in play.

Wappalyzer is a Chrome extension that provides insights into over a thousand different technologies across numerous categories. 

That's not all. With Wappalyzer, you can dive deeper into the complicated web of technologies. From e-commerce platforms to analytics tools, from marketing solutions to payment processors, and from customer relationship management (CRM) systems to content delivery networks (CDN).

2. ColorZilla

ColorZilla is aimed to be a user-friendly, feature-rich, safe, and reliable color picker and color-related Google Chrome extension.

With over 4 million downloads, ColorZilla has become the go-to Chrome and Firefox extensions of developers. Some of the features this extension has to offer are:

Eyedropper: Accurately record any pixel's color.

The Ultimate CSS Gradient Generator: Easily create beautiful gradients.

Website Color Analyzer: Provide color schemes for any website in real-time.

Palette Viewer: Look through the installed palettes to get ideas.

Color History: Record the colors you've recently chosen for convenient access.

3. Web Developer

This extension is a versatile tool for web development offering the following things:

1. Element Inspection: Easily inspect and analyze HTML and CSS elements on webpages, facilitating debugging and troubleshooting.
2. JavaScript Control: Enable/turn JavaScript execution on or off to test website behavior and troubleshoot JavaScript-related issues.
3. Cache Management: Quickly clear the browser cache to ensure that testing changes and debugging cached content problems load the latest version of the asset.

With over a million active users, this has become one of the most popular Chrome extensions for web developers to use. 

4. CSS Viewer

CSS Viewer helps you examine the CSS properties of any webpage. This browser extension offers the styling of buttons, images, text, and more with ease. After you install the extension, just click on any element of interest and instantly reveal the associated CSS code.

This simple and intuitive interface simplifies your workflow while providing invaluable insights into website styling.

It should be noted that CSS Viewer is independently developed and not affiliated with Google.

5. JSONVue

JSONVue boasts crucial support for JSONP (JSON with Padding), a technique enabling cross-domain communication between web servers and browsers. This support ensures that users can effortlessly view and manipulate JSONP data within the JSONVue environment.

Other than that, it also offers the following:

1. JSON Visualization: Visualize JSON data with ease within the browser to better understand its structure and contents.
2. Editing Capabilities: Edit JSON files directly within the extension, facilitating quick modifications without needing external tools.
3. Validation and Formatting: Ensures syntactic correctness and readability through syntax highlighting, formatting, and validation features, streamlining JSON data manipulation.

6. Window Resizer

The Window Resizer extension provides:

1. Screen Resolution Testing: Users can test websites in different screen resolutions by resizing the browser window to predefined dimensions or custom sizes.
2. Responsive Design Verification: Aids in verifying the responsiveness of websites by simulating various screen sizes, aiding in the development of responsive web designs.
3. Cross-Device Compatibility: Helps ensure cross-device compatibility by enabling users to view how websites appear and function across different screen sizes and devices.

It is a highly useful Chrome extension for developers to check their website compatibility across various devices. 

7. React Developer Tools

The React Developer Tools Chrome extension lets you understand and edit React components in your web applications. Here's what it does:

1. View Component Tree: It shows you the structure of React components in your app, like a family tree. You can see how components are nested inside each other.

2. Edit and See Changes: You can inspect the code of a component and make changes. As soon as you make a change, you'll see the results instantly in the browser without needing to refresh the page.

3. Inspect Multiple Elements: You can add multiple elements to the tree and inspect each separately. This lets you understand the hierarchy of components better.

4. Easy Navigation: Once you're done editing a component, you can use breadcrumbs to move back and forth between its parent components, making navigating through your app's structure easy.

8. Ghostery

Block all the ads (link the ad-blocking article here) that show up on any website you visit!

The Ghostery extension provides:

1. Enhanced Privacy Protection: Ghostery helps protect your online privacy by blocking trackers and ads, allowing you to browse the web more securely and anonymously.
2. Tracker Identification: It identifies and displays the trackers on websites you visit, giving you insight into the types of data collected about your online activities.
3. Customizable Settings: Ghostery offers customizable settings to control which trackers and ads are blocked, allowing you to customize your browsing experience to your preferences and privacy needs.

9. Fonts Ninja

Like a particular font used in a website? You can now identify it with the help of Fonts Ninja. 

The Fonts Ninja extension offers:

1. Font Identification: Fonts Ninja identifies fonts used on web pages, allowing users to discover and explore typography in real time as they browse the web.
2. Font Pairing and Matching: Users can find complementary font pairs and match fonts with similar alternatives, enhancing design possibilities and creativity.
3. Easy Access and Integration: Fonts Ninja provides a seamless experience with easy access to font details, styles, and licensing information, empowering designers to make informed font choices directly within their browsers.

10. EditThisCookie

Here's what the EditThisCookie developer extension allows you to do:

1. View and Edit Cookies: It provides an easy-to-use interface where you can view all the cookies associated with the current website you're visiting. It displays details such as the cookie name, value, domain, expiration date, etc. You can edit any of these properties directly from the interface.
2. Add and Delete Cookies: You can add or delete new cookies as needed. This is useful for testing or managing your browsing preferences on specific websites.
3. Export and Import Cookies: The extension allows you to export cookies to a file or import cookies from a file. This feature comes in handy when transferring cookies between different browsers or devices.
4. Filtering and Searching: Search for specific cookies or filter them. This makes finding and managing cookies easier, especially on websites with many cookies.
5. Backup and Restore: EditThisCookie lets you create backups of your cookies or restore them from a backup file. This becomes useful if you accidentally delete essential cookies or need to revert to a previous state.

Wrapping it up

So, this is my list of the best Chrome extensions for web developers. Now, you might feel that there are better extensions or alternatives out there, but that doesn't mean this list of Chrome extensions isn't useful.

 Apart from developers, if you are just curious and trying to learn more, you can also benefit from these extensions.