20 of the best Chrome OS apps

Evan Gower October 7, 2011

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Google uses a rather woolly definition of the word “app”: many of the so-called applications that you’ll find in the Chrome Web Store are nothing more than bookmarks to websites that you can use from pretty much any internet browser.

That noted, here are 20 “apps” that make Chrome OS better. All these applications also work on the Chrome desktop browser for Windows, Mac and Linux.

Write Space

Write Space introduces a darkroom concept to the Chrome browser, creating a blank canvas for distraction-free writing. It isn’t tied to the cloud, and instead autosaves locally. Write Space is also self-contained, meaning that you can carry on working without an internet connection – a significant benefit over Google Docs, until Google introduces offline support.

Turn Off the Lights

This application has only one function, but performs it flawlessly. Visit any webpage sporting embedded video, click the associated lightbulb icon in the address bar and the screen will dim, focusing your attention on the video. Options to customise this application are understandably limited, but users can alter opacity settings, assign a hotkey, and introduce special effects to the process.

Feedly

Presented in a clean and attractive format, Feedly is a magazine-style RSS news aggregator. It ties into Google Reader, allows feeds to be separated into categories, and offers a wealth of social-networking integration for easy sharing. There’s a mini-toolbar, too, that sits in the right-hand corner of the screen and allows you to quickly add a website into your newsfeed.

Aviary Image Editor

A free, cloud-based image editor, Aviary sports enough features to give lightweight desktop alternatives a run for their money. It looks similar to Photoshop, which introduces a subtle learning curve, and performance is more than acceptable for basic edits on photos for blogs and so on, provided that the original file size isn’t too large (it struggles with anything above 5MB). Aviary is part of a comprehensive editing package, with audio and visual effects editors also available through the browser.

Aviary

LastPass

The popular online password manager is also available for Chrome OS, providing a secure hub for all your login details. The user interface is visually bland, yet it’s effortless to navigate and practically bursting with functionality. LastPass can also auto-complete forms on your behalf, which is a notable time-saver when filling out web registration forms.

Clip To Evernote

Supporting the Evernote service, this application encourages the gathering of web clippings. Unfortunately, you’ll need to use the Evernote website (which is also available as an “app”) to actually organise your chosen extracts, making this application little more than a collation tool, but for sheer ease of use it can’t be overlooked.

GoodFood

An app for healthy-eating junkies, GoodFood delivers dozens of recipes from the BBC magazine in an attractive, tablet-style format. Recipes can be searched by ingredient or sorted by type (such as starter, pudding and so on). Each is accompanied by step-by-step instructions and high-resolution photos that leave you drooling over your keyboard.

MeasureIt

Ideal for web design, MeasureIt helps users quickly establish the size of web images. Click the ruler icon and draw a box around the relevant graphic, and the application will provide the measurement in pixels. Sadly, the drawn box can’t be resized once you’ve let go of the mouse, but it’s quick and easy to try again.

ScribeFire

An invaluable tool for authors of multiple blogs, ScribeFire allows you to create a single article that can be posted to numerous locations at once. It’s a far cry from the WordPress publishing suite (ScribeFire lacks even a basic spellcheck) but remains worthwhile due to the considerable time-saving element. There’s also support for monetised posts through the ScribeFire QuickAds service.

Web of Trust

Although safe from the malware that plagues Windows, Chrome OS adopters could still fall foul of phishing attacks. A crowd-sourced application, Web of Trust colour codes the internet: green indicates safety; red tags websites you’d do well to avoid. There’s also a child-safety feature, but, as Davey Winder has previously acknowledged, it offers little guidance and thus isn’t an alternative to parental responsibility and supervision.

Autodesk Homestyler

Homestyler is a terrific web app for those looking to revamp their living quarters without calling on Handy Andy et al. Room design is handled by a drag-and-drop system, which alleviates the usual complexity associated with software of this nature. The option to flip between 2D flatplans and elegant 3D views is hugely impressive, although we found performance was sluggish on the relatively low-powered Chromebook.

Smooth Gestures

You could potentially ditch navigational buttons and keyboard shortcuts for good with Smooth Gestures. Hold the right mouse button to activate the gesture menu, and then draw the relevant symbol: a straight line for a new tab; a “U” shape to refresh, and so on. There’s an in-app cheatsheet to help you remember, and symbols can also be customised. The application is rather forgiving, too, with poorly drawn gestures often recognised, but you’ll have to use a mouse since Smooth Gestures doesn’t play nicely with the Chromebook’s trackpad.

Entanglement

Seemingly easy, but actually fiendishly difficult, Entanglement is a connect the dots-style mental challenge. Each placed tile extends the line further, imploring you to create an intricate network and amass a high score. Forethought is required, since each tile contains many potential lines that will begin to match up over time, and a collision equals game over. Shame it ran slowly on our Chromebook.

Panelize

A potential solution to the Chrome OS issue of multitasking, Panelize allows you to open tabs as resizable pop-up panels. Google applications, such as Calendar and Reader, have native support and scale to the size of the panel; unfortunately, standard websites don’t behave in this fashion, requiring scrolling to view.

iMacros

Competent coders rejoice: iMacros helps users escape the dull, repetitive coding tasks associated with web browsing, such as auto-completing web forms, by creating a macro similar to those in Word. There’s a macro recorder, but it’s largely unreliable, making coding experience (or a willingness to learn) a prerequisite.

Eye Dropper

The ideal companion to any image editor, Eye Dropper introduces a colour selection tool, which when pointed at a colour – for example, the red featured in our new PC Pro logo – will reveal the hexadecimal code. There’s a custom colour picker, too.

The Camelizer

A fantastic app, afflicted by a bizarre and irrelevant name, The Camelizer is a price-checking shopping aid. Navigate to a reputable online shop, such as Amazon, and this application will produce a line graph demonstrating the fluctuation in price of your chosen product. It’s a useful tool to decide when to make a purchase, and to avoid getting stung by temporarily inflated prices.

TabCloud

TabCloud eases the synchronisation of tabs across multiple browsers, allowing you to transfer a surfing session from your Chromebook to your desktop PC, for example. Moving a session between computers requires only a couple of mouse clicks, and each bundle of tabs can be named, and individual tabs can even be repositioned, re-opening in a different order.

HootSuite

This Twitter and Facebook client not only matches the power of desktop software such as TweetDeck, but also delivers a heap of extra features. Chief among them are analytical tools that allow you to generate customised reports on your followers and Twitter habits, which is exceptionally useful if you’re using social networking for your business.

Symtica

Arguably deserving of native support, Symtica congregates Google’s various web services into a single quick-launch bar. Certain services, such as Gmail, include a submenu for fast access to the inbox, settings or new email pages, saving your time accordingly. There’s also HTTPS support for compatible applications.