Working from home is great, but it can also be stressful. Things can be just as chaotic in the home office as in the company itself – or even more chaotic.
That’s why we’ve put together six browser apps for you that will help you concentrate better, avoid distractions or complete certain tasks faster.
1. Pocket – Distraction? Later!
Regardless of whether you are working from home or at work, the distractions on the internet are omnipresent. Surely you know the situation when you just want to read that one article or watch that one video that actually has nothing to do with work.
An app that could help you improve in this aspect is Pocket. With one click you can save entire articles or videos in the app to watch them when you have time.
Pocket collects the links and displays them in a separate view without images so that you are distracted as little as possible. In addition, you can assign tags to the saved content, set favorites and archive it again.
Pocket can be found hereas an app for Android or iPhone and as a browser extension for Chrome, Firefox, Safari and Opera.
2. Noisli – Background noise for work
There is not always the peace and quiet that one might wish for when working. This is especially true if you work in an environment that often gets noisy. And what is the solution to noise in the office? More noise, of course!
Noisli is an app that blasts you with various uniform background noises to help you stay focused and block out any distracting noise.
In the user interface, you can activate various sound effects that many people may find relaxing. Including rain, a campfire, wind, the sound of the sea and many more.
The volume can be adjusted individually for each effect and once you are satisfied with a combination of sounds, you can save them and play them in a playlist. Timers are also included.
You can find Noisli hereas an app for Android or iPhone and as a browser add-on for Chrome.
3. Limit – Fight the weaker inner self
Speaking of timers, Limit allows you to limit visits to certain websites, helping you with self-discipline. For example, do you spend too much time on YouTube? Then limit yourself to, for example, 30 minutes a day. If you spend more than 30 minutes on YouTube, the browser add-on blocks the website.
In order to keep track, you also have the option of displaying the elapsed time on the website. So you always have an eye on how much time is left.
Limit is the highly simplified version of Freedom, which is why you are often asked to buy Limit’s much larger, more extensive and, above all, paid brother. For starters, the little brother is completely sufficient.
Limit is available as Addon for Chrome.
4. Marinara: Pomodoro Assistant – Efficiency as a browser app
Marinara, as the name suggests, is all about the Pomodoro technique – a popular time management technique designed to help you work more efficiently.
The technique consists of five steps:
- Put the task in writing
- Set the timer to 25 minutes
- Work on the task until the alarm goes off; mark with an X
- Take a short break (5 minutes)
- Take a longer break (15-20 minutes) after every four blocks of time (promodori)
Marinara will help you keep track of times for this method. You can also customize the break and work sections at your discretion and set various notifications to alert you to your timing as needed.
Marinara is available as Addon for Chrome
Marinara shows you statistics about your promodri.
5. Selecttext – Copy text from videos
Should it happen that you have to write down texts from videos or you simply want to make comments on a video presentation, then Selectext is the right thing for you. With this small but very handy app, you can easily copy and paste the text displayed in a video into a document.
Simply install the add-on in the browser and stop the video at the point from which you want to copy the text. Now you press that Selectext
button in the top left corner of the screen and all text passages are displayed to you individually.
Now you can either click on the individual sections and copy them, or hold down the left mouse button and draw a rectangle to copy all the text passages you want.
As you can see in the comparison below, sometimes text sections are generated that don’t even appear in the video. However, given how handy the tool can be, we think that’s just a minor flaw.
Selecttext is Available as Addon for Chrome and Firefox
6. Scribe – Instructions and documentation in seconds
Do you have to or do you want to make instructions for yourself or colleagues more often? If you want to write guides or documentation in the browser, there is probably no better tool than Scribe.
Just install the browser add-on and go to the website you want to write a guide about. Now click on the add-on icon in the browser and press »Start Recording«.
Scribe now records your screen, capturing every click and saving a matching screenshot of buttons, search bars and much more. That means you just click through the website as usual and Scribe will do the rest.
When you’re done with the task you’re creating the guide for, press the add-on icon again and click Stop Recording. Now a guide is automatically created and illustrated.
For a better understanding, I have made a small guide for you as an example on how to find Gamestar Tech. This took me about five seconds:
A guide created with Scribe. Processing time: five seconds.
Scribe is available as Addon for Chrome . You can find even more practical apps for better working in the home office in the following article:
Save time: The 7 best browser extensions that do the work for you
Do you already use some of these apps? Can you recommend any more apps and add-ons along these lines? Write it to us in the comments.
Table of Contents
