Working from home means no colleague is sitting beside you from whom you can get motivated. But, don’t let the work from home model hamper your efficiency.Even if you use Microsoft Edge, various add-ons will help you excel in the job and offer maximum productivity even from home.
1. Office
Microsoft Office 365 is one of the most prominent office suites and is particularly popular among remote or distributed teams. If your organization also uses Microsoft 365, this official add-on is a must-have for you.
It’ll let you access your Office files directly in your browser, whether the files are on your computer or in the cloud. With it, you can also open files stored in apps like OneDrive and OneDrive for Business.
Moreover, you can use other Office tools like Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, and Sway in your browser, even without Office installation. This add-on is available in 50 languages, so you can use it in the language you know best.
2. Adobe Acrobat for Microsoft Edge
If your work involves using and signing PDF files, use Adobe Acrobat for Microsoft Edge for seamless PDF management. This add-on allows you to view, convert, compress, and sign PDF files online in your browser.
Make it your default PDF viewer to open PDF files in Acrobat online. It’ll also let you add comments to the PDF and share them with your colleagues for review. You can also fill in forms, add signatures, highlight any text, and draw in PDF files using the add-on.
With an Adobe Acrobat DC subscription, you can also convert web pages into PDF with the add-on while retaining the original layout, formats, and links.
3. Checker Plus for Google Calendar
As someone working remotely, you need to ensure that you don’t miss any meetings or appointments. Use Checker Plus for the Google Calendar add-on that’ll let you see your upcoming events and meetings from your browser toolbar.
Besides notifying you of meetings, this add-on will also make adding or snoozing events possible even without opening the Google Calendar. It also supports quickly adding events in various ways and customizing calendar views.
Once you add this add-on to the browser, it’ll run in the background even when the browser is closed. You can also receive its notification without an internet connection.
Checker Plus for Google Calendar will notify you of the birthdays and events of all your Google contacts, so you don’t miss them. Its voice and sound notifications are highly beneficial to visually impaired people.
4. Gmail Checker - Read, Label & Manage
Gmail Checker is the add-on that notifies you when a new email reaches your Inbox. All Gmail users will find it useful as one add-on supports multiple Gmail accounts.
Its most vital feature is the support for multiple accounts and labels. The add-on also uses RSS technology and hence, consumes low bandwidth. There is no need to open Gmail in your browser while you’re doing something important.
Gmail Checker lets you view the email summary from the browser toolbar. You can also perform basic tasks like marking it as read, reporting it as spam, or moving the email to the trash or archive folder. For further steps, you need to access Gmail.
5. BlockSite: Block Websites & Stay Focused
It is more important to stay focused when you are part of a distributed team. You can use BlockSite to block any distracting website and kill the habit of procrastination for good. This add-on lets you become more productive by blocking apps and sites where you waste your precious time.
You can even select a website where you’ll be redirected while attempting to access a blocked website. It also lets you password protect the blocked sites, so you can’t easily remove them.
Now, set up a focus time to concentrate better and stay on track throughout the day. Also, you can block hundreds of websites of the same category in just one click instead of blocking them separately.
6. Break Timer
While working from home, you may get so engrossed in the work that you forget to take a break. The Break Timer add-on will help you take breaks for improved health and productivity.
This add-on reminds you to take a break when you are working too long. It also assists you in tracking your progress through timers and statistics. You can also check it to know the remaining time before the next break.
By default, the add-on follows an improved Pomodoro technique, where it reminds you to take a break for two minutes after every 28 minutes. You can also change it to any other preset or customized time frame from the settings section.
7. Shut Up: Comment Blocker
Blocking websites can prevent many people from getting distracted, but what if your task involved visiting various websites for references and ideas? Not to mention the comment section of blogs that can often make you lose your temper.
Add Shut Up add-on in your Edge browser and keep calm. This add-on will hide comments by default. If you want to view the comments, you can show them with one click.
What’s more, it remembers the sites where you turn on comments, and the next time you visit that site, it’ll display the comments automatically.
8. Night Eye - Dark mode on any website
Night Eye is an add-on that takes care of your eyes while you take care of the workload. With it, you can view almost all the websites, including Google, GitHub, Wikipedia, Stack Overflow, Quora, and Facebook, in dark mode.
Instead of simply inverting the color, this add-on analyzes the colors and images of a webpage before turning it into dark mode. Hence, you get an improved browsing experience.
With it, you can also view the websites in normal mode or filtered mode, where you can adjust the brightness, warmth, and contrast without changing the website colors. It also lets you schedule the dark mode.
Work From Home Efficiently Using Microsoft Edge
Edge users can make the most of their browser by using its top add-ons. These are some of the best add-ons work from home professionals should use for putting up their best performance while taking care of their health.
Add-ons are also available for various streams of work. All you need to do is check the add-on list of Edge and find the ones you need.