Executive Function Series: Let's Get Organized!: Organization within your Chrome Web Browser

 Hi everyone,

The beginning of the new year is usually when I go into  "cleaning mode".  I'm not sure if it is because of the colder days that keep us inside, but I usually feel the desire to clean out and organize in January.  For Christmas this year, I asked for "The Home Edit" book after binge-watching their show on Netflix!

One of my favorite gifts from 2020!!

Our electronic world is no different. Below are some features that everyone can use to "clean up" in their Chrome Web Browser and stay organized in 2021.

Organize your Chrome Tab's

I admit it, I am the person that will usually have about 20 tabs open on my browser at a time.  Not only is it visually distracting, but it can also leave my computer running slowly.  Below are a couple of ways that you can organize your open tabs:

1.  One Tab:  like the name suggests, this is a way to take all of your open tabs and condense them into one list and save and organize them for future use.  This is a free Chrome extension that is very simple to use:  when you are ready to condense and save your tabs, just click on the One Tab icon and those tabs will be automatically grouped together.   For further organization, you can name your tab group, you can star it, and you can lock the tab group.  You have the option to restore all of the tabs within the grouping, or just click on the website that you want to open.  You can also delete the tab grouping or individual websites within the tab when you are done with them.  I will use this if at the end of the day I haven't gotten to all of the tabs that I had open but need to reference them the next day or within the week.  I will also use this when doing PD presentations:  I will create a tab with all of the links that I will need for a presentation so I just have to open the tab vs going to each individual page to launch.  Teachers have used this for grouping websites for lessons, naming each tab based on the lesson or date so that they can easily go back to find the website.  

For more information, you can visit their website:  https://www.one-tab.com/ 

2.  Tab Snooze: Another free Chrome extension, Tab Snooze allows you to save an individual tab, but it gives you the option to select when you want those tab(s) opened again.  You can choose from later in the day/evening, the next day, the weekend, next week, next month or even by picking a specific date. The settings menu allows you to set notifications, dates, and times. You also have the option of viewing those "sleeping" tabs at any time by clicking on the tab snooze icon and going to the sleeping tabs page, and you can open the tab from there.

For more information, you can visit their website at https://tabsnooze.com/

There are also some options directly within Google Chrome's toolbar that you can use to organize your tabs:

1. Pin tabs:  by selecting this option from the tab menu, it will move the selected tab to the left-hand side of your toolbar and it will "pin it" in that location on the page.  A reason to use this is if you have websites that you use daily when you launch your Chrome Web Browser, those sites will automatically open that tab every time you open the browser.  This does present the possibility of slowing down your browser when you open it up, so I wouldn't recommend having a large number of tabs pinned. I use the Pin tabs for my Gmail and Google Calendar pages.

Organize your Chrome extensions

I have a lot of extensions within my toolbar and it can become very cluttered! Here are a couple of different ways to organize all of those extensions:

1. Pin extensions: this is a "newish" feature within Google, which allows you to "pin" into the toolbar those extensions that you want to see. Now, I will only place those extensions that I use on a daily basis on the toolbar.

2. Drag and Drop: once you have "pinned" your extensions, you also have the ability to use the drag and drop feature to organize your extensions. This allows me to place the extensions in the order that works best for me.

To see how to pin and organize your extensions, check out this video I created about how to pin and organize the Read&Write for Google Chrome extensions on your toolbar:

3. Extensity: This is a great tool that allows you to enable and disable your extensions without having to go into your extensions menu. This tool is helpful if you have a lot of extensions that you don't use often, but still want to keep within the extensions list. Also, you may find that some extensions do not work well if there is another extension that is active, so turning it off in Extensity, prevents extensions from interacting with each other.

What are your tricks and tips for staying organized in Chrome?  Share your ideas here!

Talk soon,

Cheryl

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