Ultimate Google toolbox: 20 tips, tricks, and hacks - hassourprive

Google's search, mail, maps, and cloud services are much de facto public utilities. Light up your browser, and there Google is. But preceptor't take Google for given—in that location's much more to its core services than meets the eye.

With this toolbox of tips, usability tricks, and third-company services, you can rule the Google universe and bend it to your will. The following will help you keep your privacy, sterilize Google annoyances, and bring the nigh out of automation (soh you can waste your time doing other things online).

Lookup privately: Startpage (also best-known as Ixquick) is an alternate to Google's hunt page that lets you use Google's search engine but doesn't beam Google your IP address surgery allow cookies to be ordered happening your computer. Startpage tush besides kibosh embarrassing ads based along previous searches from haunting you across the Web. If you want clannish results from fourfold seek engines, also try DuckDuckGo, which excludes Google results just has similar privateness-oriented features.

Block Google trailing on the far side just hunting: The handy inspection and repair Disconnect works across all websites you visit. Available as a browser extension, it disables tracking by parties such as Google, Facebook, and Digg.

Compared with the Do Non Track features presently built into browsers, Unplug gives you more than protection. Although Firefox, Internet IE (9 and 10), and Campaign have Do Not Track privacy options that you hindquarters enable, website implementation of the feature is by choice—which means there's no guarantee it will make for many sites. Disconnect, happening the other mitt, whole works on all sites no matter what.

Answer questions for lazy friends: The next sentence a relative or buddy emails a question that he or she could easily resolve with a unanalyzable Google search, whip out Let Me Google That for You. Simply type the query in the box, and share the link from the school tex force field underneath. Your friend wish see how typing the query in Google can yield results without bothering you. Information technology's a learning experience for the disconnected.

Start Chromium-plate in Concealed mode every time you launch the browser: To start Chrome in its private-browsing Incognito manner, right-click the Chrome cutoff icon along your desktop, quality Properties, and in the Target field add –incognito to the end of the course of study way of life. Make a point to put a space between the last quotation tick in the existing text edition train and the hyphen you insert, and you'rhenium well to go. (View the screenshot for an example.)

Check multiple Google Mail accounts at once: Chequer Plus for Gmail lets you monitor your inboxes from a single place, without even having a tab open. At one time you install this Chrome extension, it automatically detects Google accounts to which you are communicative in. From an icon adjacent to the omnibar, you sack then find out new email messages at a glance crossways your accounts. Checker Nonnegative includes sound notifications, and it prat even run in the background when Chrome is out of use, indeed you never miss incoming mail. You can read, delete, archive, or mark email as read; when you need to reply or to compose bran-new messages, however, Checker Positive will open a new Gmail window.

Automatically economize Gmail attachments to Google Drive: Thanks to the Mail to Drive serve, which automatically copies attachments from your Gmail messages to Google Drive, you preceptor't receive to stock files topically then upload them to your drive. Once you've installed it, you set up a extra label that you assign to messages with attachments you want to copy to Google Drive. The app runs in the Google Apps Cloud automatically all 5 minutes (so you don't need to let your browser open to Gmail) and copies the attachments to a designated brochure. You too receive an email message when the reassign is done.

Tame inbox overload: Ever feel like you're drowning in an endless ocean of email messages? E-mail Game attempts to rescue you. IT's basically an choice interface for Gmail that shows you only unrivaled message at a time and challenges you to reply in a timely fashion. You get 5 seconds to decide what to do with each message, earning points for performing for each one task promptly. E.g., if you choose to reply to a message, the interface gives you 3 transactions to do so, though you can add more time if required. At the end of the session, you get a tally of how many an points you racked upward while ploughing through your inbox.

Become a boo's-eye view of your inbox: Sign up with your Gmail credentials, and Gmail Meter sends you a report at the beginning of all month with your pass senders and recipients, plus charts for the time of the day and week when you receive and send the about email.

Eliminate YouTube annoyances: Watching a YouTube video is getting harder by the day with all the dealing distractions surrounding each video. You tin draw YouTube fewer annoying, however, with the YouTube Options for Google Chrome web browser reference, which allows you to tweak all aspect of YouTube. Finished this extension you can obliterate ads and annotations, disable autoplay, and hide comments.

Make YouTube videos easier connected the eye: Compatible with most browsers, the simple extension Turn Murder the Lights dims everything on the webpage around the video. Whenever you see a smallish lamp image connected your toolbar, you can click it to make the surroundings go dark, turning YouTube into more of a lean-back-and-revel experience.

Move chop-chop through YouTube videos: Keyboard shortcuts can save you a number of computer mouse clicks. Entreat the J key to rewind the video a some seconds, operating room press L to fast-forward a couple of seconds into the video. You can also use the K key, equally wellspring Eastern Samoa the spacebar, to pause and survey videos.

Future up: Download YouTube videos

Download YouTube videos to your computer: Although many apps and websites claim to help you make this, they can be hit and young woman at best, especially since Google is nerve-racking to block various services from downloading copyrighted videos. One simple and effective option is the Download YouTube Videos add-connected for Firefox, which inserts a download push button underneath videos on YouTube and allows you to superior the quality level at which to save the file.

Edit photos and videos directly from Google Drive: The Pixlr Express app spares you from having to download photos, make basic edits in a separate program, and then reupload them. Once you install the app, simply right-clack an image on your Google Drive to control an option to open it in Pixlrs, where you can crop and adjust the image, A well as ADD effects overlays, borders, text, and stickers. Once your edit is done, you can lay aside and replace your Google Drive file out, operating theater save the revolutionary version as a copy, without going away your browser. You can also try Pixlr Editor for a more Photoshop-like interface with tools for red-eye reduction and drawing. If you'd like to apply the same concept to video, cheque down WeVideo.

Institutionalise and incur faxes from Google Drive for free: Fax machines are almost extinct, but along the odd occasion you need to charg a fax or sign a text file, turn to HelloFax, a cracking extension that does both. The avail lets you send a fax direct from your Google Drive to a fax automobile barely by entering the total; inbound faxes come to you by electronic mail in the form of a PDF, and reside in a special Google Drive folder.

Sign documents and fill in forms from Google Drive: With HelloSign, you canful store your touch to sign documents or fill out forms, which you can send via e-mail. The app also lets you assign signature Fields in documents and institutionalize signature requests trabeated from a leaflet on your Google Drive.

Automatize mundane Google Drive tasks: Wappwolf connects to your Google Get (Oregon Dropbox calculate) and seeks out certain types of files for which you have specific actions. For example, you lav postulate Wappwolf to convert to PDF any document you discharge into a particular folder on your drive. To boot, you can stimulate the tool convert audio frequency files to a new format, send files to your Kindle, or upload photos to quadruple social networks straightaway, as well atomic number 3 resize images operating theatre add effects.

Encrypt and safeguard your Google Drive files: A good tool for this job is BoxCryptor, which encrypts files on the fly and syncs them with Google Drive immediately after you save them. Since the encrypting and decrypting occur topically, your watchword never transmits to third parties, devising your file out unreadable even if someone breaches your Google Drive. For more, see this tutorial on exploitation BoxCryptor.

Turn Google Maps into a gamy: Map Cube is an experimental Google Chrome browser-supported game successful by Google Maps that turns Newborn York, Yeddo, and many early cities into a 3D tilt-labyrinth game (see video below). To encounter, you tilt a clod through city streets and across bridges to orbit landmarks of historic and cultural musical note.

Undelete events, including the details, in Google Calendar: Whenever you delete an event, that data sticks around awhile before IT's permanently gone. The tool Spanning Undelete fetches a list of late deleted events and lets you choose which ones to bring to from a heel of recoverable items.

Criminal record calls with Google Voice: Although Google doesn't allow you to platte extroverted calls, you can record calls you receive. Once you enable the pick under Settings > Calls > Call Options, you bu press out the 4 Florida key at any meter to record incoming calls. A voice will bank bill on the line that the call is beingness recorded, and IT will issue another alert when you stop the process. You can access your transcribed calls by clicking Recorded along the near side of the page. Different laws apply to name recording depending on location, so check your body politic's current Torah as well as federal regulations before using this feature.