Building Extension Manager: A Simple Tool That Made My Browser Life Better

So I wanted to build something small but useful — something I'd personally use. I realized my Chrome toolbar was a mess. Dozens of extensions, most of which I use only occasionally. Clicking through the extensions page every time just to disable or enable them? Not it.

So I thought — why not make a tool to manage them all easily? Enable, disable, remove. Boom. Clean toolbar, faster browser, less noise.

I started building Extension Manager — a simple tool to do exactly that.

At first, it was just a UI list of all installed extensions with toggles. But then I thought: what if I could do batch actions? Turn all off. Or have profiles, like a "Dev Mode" with only the stuff I need for work, and a "Clean" mode for browsing.

Adding Profiles was a turning point. It made the extension feel powerful. I could switch between groups of extensions with a single click. No more hunting for that one extension I forgot the name of.

Then I added support for always-enabled extensions — the ones I never want to turn off. It made the whole thing feel much safer to use. And syncing profiles via Chrome Cloud Storage was just the icing on the cake. Set it up once, use it anywhere.

Somewhere along the way I realized this idea wasn't new. It's actually a rebranded version of an open source extension that hadn't been updated in a while. But I wasn't trying to reinvent — I just wanted to modernize it, clean it up, and use it myself.

Now I use Extension Manager every day. Browser feels faster. Toolbar looks clean. I don't dread managing my extensions anymore.

This was a small project, but it reminded me why I love building tools: make life just a little better, one click at a time.

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Try Extension Manager on Chrome Web Store