4 Safari extensions that increase productivity on your Apple Mac

We all face increasing workloads and busy social lives, so if you are not managing to get everything done that needs doing, use these 4 Safari extensions to increase your productivity.

There are not that many extensions for Safari, but even though the collection is small, there are some useful ones. There is a variety of tools here and while you could install all of them, but beware of browser bloat and too many extensions might slow it down, use too much memory, or increase battery drain. Just pick your favourites.

Inevitably this is a personal collection and other people might have a different collection of favourite productivity extensions. Tell us about the extensions you have in the comments at the bottom of the page.

Find and install Safari extensions

1. Open Safari
2. Go to the Safari menu
3. Select Safari Extensions on the menu
4. The Mac App Store opens and shows the Safari extensions section.
5. Scroll down to find an extension or use the search box
6. Click Get to download an extension
7. Run the app in the Applications folder and follow any instructions
8. Enable it in Safari > Preferences > Extensions

Uninstall Safari extensions

1. Open Safari
2. Go to the Safari menu
3. Select Preferences on the menu
4. Select the Extensions tab in the window
5. Clear the checkbox next to the extension to disable it
6. Drag the app from the Applications folder to the Trash

I prefer to use AppCleaner to remove extensions and applications rather than dragging them to the Trash. Here is an old review of AppCleaner, but it hasn't changed much since then and I still use it in macOS Catalina.

Grammarly for Safari

Grammarly is a browser extension and website that provides writing aids that can analyse text and highlight spelling errors, punctuation problems and poor grammar. You need an account, but a free one is all that is needed to get the basic benefits of spelling and grammar checking. Paid accounts offer more features of course.

You could visit the website and paste text into the editor there, but this is a pain and the Safari extension is a more convenient way to check your writing when tying into a web form or web app.

Whenever you have to enter text into a web page, like a form or even an online text editor, the Grammarly extension automatically checks what is being typed. It automatically underlines spelling and grammar errors as you type and you can see mistakes in real-time.

Move the mouse over a highlighted word and Grammarly displays a pop-up box describing the problem and it presents possible solutions, such as corrected grammar or spelling. The screenshot shows it in action when typing a comment at the bottom of a web page. Grammarly works nearly everywhere you type text into web pages.

In the bottom right corner of the text box is a red number and this shows how many mistakes are in the text. Click it and you can edit the text in a pop-up Grammarly window.

This is an excellent extension that will improve your writing and it increases productivity because it checks your writing as you go, rather than requiring you to to proof-read it afterwards or send copy to someone else for checking.

Tab Suspender for Safari

This is an extension that puts Safari tabs to sleep, suspending them when they are not being used. It can be done manually by clicking a toolbar button, but it can be configured to automatically suspend tabs after a certain number of minutes of not being used. A whitelist of URLs that should never be suspended can be created, so it will not suspend your favorite sites.

The idea is that it enables you to focus on just the tabs you need without other tabs using CPU power, battery on a MacBook, memory and so on.

I found it suspended tabs and some memory was released, but not as much as I expected. Any gains are useful though and it can save hundreds of megabytes of memory with just half a dozen tabs. This is good on Macs with limited RAM because a lack of memory makes the Mac run more slowly, making it harder to get work done. On occasions when tabs were restored, sometimes they used even more memory than before, which is odd. Mostly, it worked fine.

It is a free extension, but as is often the case, more features can be unlocked for a price. A very low price though and it costs under US $1 to register (UK £0.49). For that you get some extra features like the option to never suspend tabs when connected to mains power, automatically restore tabs when viewed, never suspend tabs when offline (otherwise you can't restore them).

Tab Suspender for Safari is not in the usual Safari Extensions section of the Mac App Store, so search for it.

Notebook - Take Notes, Sync

Zoho has dozens of online apps that cover business and personal uses, from word processors and spreadsheets to CRM and marketing. A Zoho account is required, but you can sign up for free and many apps can be accessed for free. Notebook is one of the free apps and it is used for storing notes. It is a cross-platform app that works everywhere and is an alternative to Microsoft OneNote, Evernote and others.

Install it from the Mac App Store and then run it from the Applications folder. It prompts you to sign up or sign in and to enable the Safari extension, which adds a new button to the Safari toolbar. You need to create one or more notebooks in which to store notes, which is easy enough.

Highlight text and images on a web page in Safari and then click the Notebook button to create a new note. It is quick and easy to browse the web and save clippings for articles or projects.

Ctrl+click a web page and there are options to save the URL and thumbnail as a note, save the selected content, save a screenshot of the page, or save a reader view as a note. Reader view strips out all the clutter like adverts, banners, pop-ups and other junk, and presents a clean view of the text and images in a web article. This is a brilliant way to save web content.

Notebook is an excellent extension that boosts productivity by enabling you to research on the web and save content, URLs and whole pages as notes. Notes can be accessed on the web, on Mac, PC and phones. It is recommended.

Evernote Web Clipper

Evernote has been around for a long time and it is many people's favorite note-taking app. It has grown from a simple notebook into a business tool and the paid plans include integration with Slack, Microsoft Teams and Salesforce, team collaboration and administration, and so on.

If you don't need all that, it can be used for free, but there are some limitations, like access to Evernote notes from only two devices and only 60 MB a month can be uploaded to notes. I used a free account to create Evernote notebooks and this can be done at the Evernote website.

Run the downloaded Evernote Web Clipper app and it asks you to sign in or sign up, then activate the Safari extension. It adds a toolbar button to the browser, which when clicked, displays a panel on the right. There are options to save the article, save a simplified article, save the full page, bookmark it or screenshot it. You can choose which notebook to save the content in and add tags and remarks.

Save an article and it selects the content section of a web page. Save a full page and it includes everything, including header banners, sidebars, menus and so on. A simplified article is like saving reader view in Safari and ads, banners and other web clutter is hidden so only the text and images of an article is saved.

Your notebooks containing web clippings consisting of text, images, web pages and URLs, can be accessed by logging into the Evernote website or through Evernote apps - 2 devices for free, like a Mac and an iPhone. This is an excellent app that increases productivity when researching using the web. Store all your clippings here. It is recommended.