Your web browser is in many ways like your own personal car. You’re able to customize your browser to your own liking, and even more so when you begin to utilize useful browser extensions for increasing your productivity, and the amount of work you’re able to get done. Just like cars, browsers too, can be tuned and modified to reflect your own style.

Useful Chrome Extensions for GitHub

Today, we will take a look at twelve Chrome browser extensions that can help us have a better surfing experience on GitHub; the extensions are mostly tiny features that can prove to be quite the time savers in the long run. I’m not going to be adding pictures to this post, many of the extensions are directly hosted on GitHub and have their README files on GitHub as well.

What this will do is add a sidebar to your GitHub pages, allowing you to browse projects directly from within the browser. It’s possible that you sometimes need to access some stuff really quick, but having to download the whole repository is hardly a quick way. By using Octotree; you can reduce the amount of time spent downloading and searching projects. Works on all major browsers.

ZenHub was built as a project management tool that would be native to GitHub, and allow for seamless integration. ZenHub is also meant to enhance your overall workflow; packing features for engineers, startups, and the open-source community. After you install this extension, you get access to several features: real-time issue tracking board, feedback system (through the +1 button), and you’ll also be able to upload every file type to GitHub. It’s a great extension to be had for teams who work together on daily basis.

Are you on GitHub more often than you should be, or is it the other way around? Whatever the case, by using this lovely extension you’ll be able to see real-time notifications as they happen. No longer do you need to visit the site to see if there are any new notifications. Definitely something for the hardcore GitHub user.

What about making GitHub more like an IDE? I’m sure there are people working on that as we speak, but until that project arrives – here’s an extension that will let you select a word within the source code of a GitHub project, and then highlight all other – same – words within the file. Exactly as you’d have this feature on Sublime Text.

Right, it’s pretty much the same as the one above; except that this one will highlight the differences within the source code. Syntax highlight for diffs on GitHub.

The GitHub Linker is a Google Chrome Extension which links NPM, bower, Composer & Duo dependencies to their GitHub repository page. It also tries to resolve the require() value in a .js or .coffee file.

This is another great extension that is going to add some IDE-like functionality to your GitHub pages. Once you install the extension it is going to add functions such as documentation, and tooltips on all the GitHub code pages; and also, all identifiers will be accompanied by their definition links. The authors themselves believe that you won’t want to revert back once you get this extension.

GitHub is widely known to be the home of many great resources, like for example the D3.js library for building graphs and visualizations – did you know that there is a D3.js Gallery on GitHub; showcasing hundreds of example usages for the library? It’s pretty cool. And, if you’re inclined to build your own awesome GitHub pages – why not use this extension to help you generate better Tables of Content?

The last few extensions are going to be solely for visual enhancement only. This extension allows you to toggle between the normal GitHub contribution chart and an isometric pixel art version. I’m not sure of the real reason to want this particular extension, but perhaps someone with visual incapability might find this useful.

Don’t let the savvy name fool you, this is a great extension for anyone who likes to browse GitHub on daily basis. What this extension does is it removes the truncating of file and directory names in the repository browser, it will also automatically word-wrap long directory and file names, as well as give you the ability to fully expand the GitHub website. (1400px, 1600px and 1800px)

Do you like the social aspect of GitHub? Try this extension to automatically allocate user avatars for GitHub news and feed pages. Just like an extension should be, simple and concise.

Browser Extensions for GitHub

I hope that some of these were new to you, and that you’ll do your best to try them all out and see which one works and which one doesn’t. (for you, anyway) I’m leaning towards Octotree, ZenHub, and Sourcegraph also seemed like a really great extension. If I missed your favorite one, please recommend it in the comments.