Chrome extensions have become as much a part of my daily workflow as Figma or VS Code. The right ones save hours of repetitive work — identifying fonts, checking colour contrast, analysing page structure, inspecting other sites’ CSS, and catching accessibility issues before they become problems in production.
This is the list I’d give a junior designer on their first day: extensions I actually use, with an honest note on what each one does well and where its limits are. No padding, no “15 extensions you’ve already heard of” filler.
Colour & Design Inspection
1. ColorZilla
chrome.google.com/webstore → ColorZilla
ColorZilla is a colour picker that lets you sample any colour from anywhere on your screen — web pages, images, UI elements — and copy it as a hex, RGB, or HSL value. It also includes a gradient generator, a colour history log, and a page colour analyser that extracts the full palette from any webpage.
If you’re trying to match a colour from a client’s existing brand materials or lift a specific shade from a reference design, ColorZilla is the fastest way to do it without leaving the browser.
Best for: Colour sampling from any page, palette extraction, quick hex copying.
2. Eye Dropper
chrome.google.com/webstore → Eye Dropper
A simpler alternative to ColorZilla for those who just want a clean, fast colour picker without the extra features. Eye Dropper opens a magnified pixel grid and lets you click any colour anywhere on the screen. Clean, reliable, zero bloat.
Best for: Quick colour sampling with minimal interface.
3. WhatFont
chrome.google.com/webstore → WhatFont
WhatFont identifies the fonts being used on any webpage. Click the extension, hover over any text, and it instantly tells you the font family, size, weight, line height, and colour. Click to expand and you get the full CSS properties.
Indispensable when you’re looking at a site with beautiful typography and want to know exactly what typeface they’re using. Pairs well with my guide to the best free fonts for web designers — once you’ve identified a font, you can look up whether there’s a free alternative.
Best for: Font identification on live sites, CSS typography inspection.
4. CSS Peeper
chrome.google.com/webstore → CSS Peeper
CSS Peeper is a design-focused alternative to Chrome DevTools for inspecting styles. Where DevTools exposes the full DOM and all its complexity, CSS Peeper shows you a clean panel of design properties — colours, fonts, spacing, border radii — extracted from whatever element you click on. It also exports all the colours and assets used on a page, which is useful for competitive analysis or extracting a brand’s design system.
Best for: Design inspection without the complexity of DevTools, extracting site colour palettes, analysing competitor design systems.
5. PerfectPixel by WellDoneCode
chrome.google.com/webstore → PerfectPixel
PerfectPixel overlays a semi-transparent image on top of a webpage, allowing you to compare a static design mockup against the live implementation pixel by pixel. You upload your design file as a PNG, set the opacity and position, and check whether the built site matches the design exactly.
Essential for QA during development. The difference between a design that looks “roughly right” and one that’s actually faithful to the mockup is usually visible once you use PerfectPixel.
Best for: Design QA, matching live builds to mockups, pixel-accurate implementation checking.
Accessibility & Performance
6. axe DevTools (Deque)
chrome.google.com/webstore → axe DevTools
axe DevTools is the most widely used accessibility testing extension for web designers and developers. It analyses any webpage against WCAG accessibility guidelines and reports issues with colour contrast, missing alt text, improper heading hierarchy, unlabelled form fields, keyboard navigation problems, and more.
The free version covers the most common WCAG 2.1 AA violations — which is sufficient for most small business website QA. Running axe on every page before launch is a baseline professional practice.
Best for: Accessibility auditing, WCAG compliance checking, pre-launch QA.
7. WAVE Evaluation Tool
chrome.google.com/webstore → WAVE
WAVE (from WebAIM) is an alternative accessibility checker that overlays visual indicators directly on the page — icons showing errors, alerts, features, structural elements, and ARIA attributes in context. Some designers find WAVE’s visual approach more intuitive than axe’s panel-based reporting; it’s worth running both on important pages as they catch slightly different issues.
Best for: Visual accessibility auditing, contextual issue identification, complementing axe results.
8. Lighthouse (Built into Chrome DevTools)
Technically not a standalone extension — Lighthouse is built into Chrome DevTools (open DevTools → Lighthouse tab). But it’s worth flagging here because many designers don’t know it exists or don’t use it habitually. Lighthouse runs automated audits for performance, accessibility, best practices, and SEO, producing a scored report with specific improvement recommendations.
Running Lighthouse on client sites before delivery is standard practice. If a site scores below 90 on mobile performance before launch, it needs work. For a deeper dive on why performance matters for SEO and conversions, Google’s own data consistently shows that slower sites lose traffic and revenue.
Best for: Pre-launch performance auditing, Core Web Vitals checks, SEO technical baseline.
SEO & Page Analysis
9. SEOquake
chrome.google.com/webstore → SEOquake
SEOquake overlays SEO metrics on any SERP and provides an on-page analysis panel for any webpage. It shows domain authority, page authority, backlink counts, index status, keyword density, and a full audit of meta tags, headings, and internal links.
Useful for quick competitive analysis — check a competitor’s domain metrics, see what keywords they’re targeting in their title tags, and audit their internal linking structure without opening a paid tool. Not a replacement for a proper SEO audit tool, but valuable for fast desktop research.
Best for: Quick competitive SEO analysis, SERP metrics overlay, meta tag inspection.
10. Detailed SEO Extension
chrome.google.com/webstore → Detailed SEO Extension
Built by Glen Allsopp (Detailed.com), this extension shows a clean breakdown of any page’s SEO elements: title tag, meta description, canonical URL, robots meta, Open Graph tags, heading structure, and internal/external link counts. It’s cleaner and faster than most alternatives for quickly auditing the on-page SEO fundamentals of any site.
Best for: On-page SEO auditing, heading structure checking, meta tag review, quick pre-launch checks.
11. Redirect Path
chrome.google.com/webstore → Redirect Path
Redirect Path tracks the full HTTP header chain for any URL — showing every redirect (301, 302, meta refresh, JavaScript redirect) from the entered URL to the final destination. Critical for checking that redirects are set up correctly after a site migration, that old URLs are properly pointing to new ones, and that there are no redirect chains creating unnecessary latency.
Best for: Redirect auditing, migration QA, HTTP status code checking.
12. SimilarWeb
chrome.google.com/webstore → SimilarWeb
SimilarWeb shows estimated traffic data for any website — monthly visits, traffic source breakdown, top referring sites, and geographic distribution. The free data is directionally useful for competitive research: understanding roughly how much traffic a competitor’s site gets and where it comes from. The estimates aren’t precise, but the relative picture is usually meaningful.
Best for: Competitive traffic research, understanding a site’s traffic sources, industry benchmarking.
Responsive Design & Layout
13. Window Resizer
chrome.google.com/webstore → Window Resizer
Window Resizer resizes the browser window to preset device dimensions — common phone sizes (390px iPhone 15, 412px Pixel 8), tablets, and custom breakpoints. More convenient than Chrome DevTools’ responsive mode for quickly checking a design at specific real device dimensions.
Best for: Responsive design testing, breakpoint checking at real device sizes.
14. Page Ruler Redux
chrome.google.com/webstore → Page Ruler Redux
Page Ruler Redux lets you draw a ruler on any webpage and measure pixel dimensions, positions, and spacing directly on the screen. When you need to verify that a layout matches a spec, check spacing between elements, or confirm that an image is rendering at the correct size, this is the fastest way to do it.
Best for: Pixel measurement on live pages, spacing verification, layout QA.
15. GoFullPage
chrome.google.com/webstore → GoFullPage
GoFullPage captures a full-length screenshot of any webpage — scrolling automatically and stitching the result into a single image or PDF. Useful for presenting full-page designs to clients, documenting a site before making changes, or collecting reference screenshots from inspiration sites for a project folder.
Best for: Full-page screenshots, client presentations, design documentation, inspiration collection.
Productivity & Workflow
16. Loom
chrome.google.com/webstore → Loom
Loom records screen + camera videos and instantly generates a shareable link. For web designers, it’s primarily useful for client feedback loops — recording a walkthrough of a design concept, explaining a revision, or delivering a handover tutorial. Far more efficient than writing long emails explaining something visual.
Best for: Client walkthroughs, design feedback, project handovers, remote collaboration.
17. Toggl Track
chrome.google.com/webstore → Toggl Track
Toggl Track is a time tracking tool with a Chrome extension that lets you start and stop timers from any tab. For freelancers billing by the hour or tracking time for project estimation purposes, keeping Toggl running in the background is the most frictionless way to log time accurately without interrupting your workflow.
Best for: Time tracking, project billing, estimation benchmarking for future projects.
18. Workona Tab Manager
chrome.google.com/webstore → Workona
Workona organises Chrome tabs into workspaces — one workspace per project, client, or context. If you routinely have 30+ tabs open and lose things, Workona’s session management makes it significantly easier to switch between projects without the cognitive overhead of hunting through tab strips.
Best for: Tab and session management, multi-project organisation, reducing browser chaos.
Design Inspiration
19. Muzli 2
chrome.google.com/webstore → Muzli 2
Muzli replaces Chrome’s new tab page with a curated feed of design inspiration — pulling content from Dribbble, Behance, Medium design publications, and hand-curated collections. Every time you open a new tab, you get fresh design references. A passive way to stay informed about where design is heading without scheduling dedicated research time.
For a full list of the best web design inspiration resources, see my guide to the best web design inspiration sites.
Best for: Passive design discovery, new tab inspiration feed, staying current with design trends.
20. Fonts Ninja
chrome.google.com/webstore → Fonts Ninja
Fonts Ninja identifies fonts on any webpage and lets you try them in a text preview directly in the extension panel. It also bookmarks fonts you want to revisit and links directly to the typeface’s purchase or download page. A more design-focused alternative to WhatFont for those who want to explore and collect typefaces as part of their research process.
Best for: Font identification, typeface exploration, bookmarking fonts for future projects.
A Note on Extension Bloat
It’s easy to install twenty extensions and then wonder why Chrome is running slowly. A few practical rules:
- Only install extensions you use at least weekly. Extensions consume memory even when they’re not actively in use. Audit your extensions list every few months and remove anything you haven’t opened recently.
- Disable extensions you only need occasionally. Chrome lets you disable rather than uninstall extensions — they won’t run in the background but are available when you need them. Keep your “always on” set lean (5–8 extensions) and disable the rest until needed.
- Be cautious with permissions. Some extensions request access to read and change data on all websites. For extensions from unknown publishers, check the permissions requested and the publisher’s reputation before installing. Stick to extensions with established track records and large install bases.
- Use a separate Chrome profile for client work. Running a separate Chrome profile for each major client — or a dedicated “work” profile — keeps extensions, bookmarks, and history separate and reduces cross-contamination between projects.
Frequently Asked Questions
What are the most useful Chrome extensions for web designers?
The highest day-to-day value comes from WhatFont (font identification), ColorZilla (colour picking), axe DevTools (accessibility checking), the Detailed SEO Extension (on-page SEO auditing), and PerfectPixel (design QA). These cover the most common repetitive tasks in a web designer’s workflow without overlapping with each other.
Are Chrome extensions safe to use?
Extensions from established publishers with large install bases and regular updates are generally safe. Be cautious about extensions that request broad permissions (“Read and change all your data on all websites”) from unknown publishers — these could theoretically capture sensitive information. Stick to well-reviewed extensions from reputable sources and review your installed extensions periodically.
Do Chrome extensions slow down your browser?
Yes, if you have too many active simultaneously. Extensions run in the background and consume memory. Keep your active extension set to the 5–8 you use most frequently; disable the rest. Chrome’s Task Manager (Shift+Esc) shows you how much memory each extension is consuming if you want to identify the heaviest ones.
What’s the best Chrome extension for checking website colours?
ColorZilla is the most feature-complete option — it handles colour sampling, palette extraction, and gradient generation. For a simpler, faster colour picking experience, Eye Dropper is cleaner. Both are free.
Is there a Chrome extension to check website SEO?
The Detailed SEO Extension is the cleanest option for quick on-page auditing. SEOquake provides more data but has a busier interface. For a full technical SEO audit, a dedicated tool (Screaming Frog, Ahrefs, Semrush) is more thorough than any browser extension — but for fast desktop checks, these extensions are sufficient.
Ready to Work With a Designer Who Uses the Right Tools?
The difference between a web designer who understands accessibility, performance, and SEO from the ground up — and one who just makes things look pretty — shows up in the finished product. Every WordPress website I build is audited for accessibility, performance, and on-page SEO before delivery.
If you’re planning a new website, I offer a free, no-obligation homepage mockup — a custom design concept based on your business before you commit to anything. Or get in touch to discuss your project.
