As a developer who spends 10+ hours a day in a browser, I've become selective about my Firefox extensions. Here are five that actually stay installed:
1. uBlock Origin — Ad/Tracker Blocking
The gold standard. Blocks ads, trackers, and malicious scripts. Zero configuration needed.
2. Firefox Multi-Account Containers
Isolate work, personal, and testing sessions in separate "containers" with different cookies. Essential for testing OAuth flows.
3. Vimium-FF — Keyboard Navigation
Navigate tabs, links, and pages entirely from keyboard. Steep learning curve, massive productivity gain.
4. Tree Style Tab — Tab Management
Vertical, tree-structured tabs for managing 50+ tabs without losing your mind.
5. Weather & Clock Dashboard — New Tab Replacement
I built this one myself. When I realized I was wasting 30 seconds every morning tracking down the weather, I decided to replace my browser's blank new tab page with something actually useful.
Weather & Clock Dashboard shows:
- Live weather + 3-day forecast (no account needed)
- Multiple world clocks for different timezones
- Search bar
- Dark/light mode toggle
The whole thing is ~300 lines of pure HTML/CSS/JS — no build system, no frameworks, no tracking. MIT open source.
Why I built it vs. using existing solutions:
Most new tab extensions are either bloated (full productivity suites, news feeds, background images that lag on load) or privacy-invasive (syncing your habits to their servers).
I wanted something minimal: see the weather, see the time, get on with work.
Technical Notes for the Curious
The extension uses the browser's native Geolocation API to determine location, then hits the Open-Meteo API (completely free, no key needed) for weather data. Everything runs client-side — there's no backend, no analytics, nothing phoning home.
If you use Firefox, give it a try: addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/weather-clock-dashboard
What Firefox extensions are essential in your workflow? Drop them in the comments.
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