Fun Chrome Extensions Worth a Few Minutes (and Safe to Keep)

What are the best fun Chrome extensions to try?

Start with a cursor pack, a video speed tool and a floating player. These three make Chrome feel more personal within a minute of installing, cost nothing, and do one visible thing each, which makes them easy to judge and easy to remove.

Our angle here is harmless fun. Every pick below is free, changes only how pages look or play, and never asks you to sign in. We left out new-tab dashboards that want your history, joke extensions that inject ads, and anything whose fun depends on reading your messages. Browse the full entertainment extensions category for more.

Each extension name links to a full profile, and our editorial methodology explains why picks make the cut. The rest of this guide covers looks, video, sound, zero-install fun and how to keep all of it tidy.

Which cute and aesthetic extensions change how Chrome looks?

Cursor packs are the most visible aesthetic change an extension can make, and Chrome's built-in theme picker handles colours and backgrounds without installing anything. Combine the two and you get a matching look in about five minutes.

The three cursor extensions differ mostly in catalogue style. Sweezy Cursors leans towards animated and cute designs, Best Cursors organises packs by theme, and Custom Cursor for Chrome offers a large built-in library plus the option to upload your own image. Pick one; running two cursor extensions at once makes them fight over the same pointer.

For colours and wallpaper, use Chrome's own side panel instead of a theme extension:

1. Open a new tab with Ctrl+T on Windows, Linux and ChromeOS or Cmd+T on macOS.
2. Click Customize Chrome (the pencil button in the bottom-right corner of the New Tab page).
3. Under Change theme, pick a collection such as landscapes or art, or choose Upload an image to use your own picture.
4. Pick an accent colour from the colour swatches to tint the toolbar and tabs.
5. Toggle Refresh daily if you want a new background from the same collection every day.

How do you set up a custom cursor extension?

Install it, pin it, choose a pack from its toolbar popup, then reload any tabs that were already open. That last step is the one people skip, and it is why the new cursor sometimes seems not to work.

1. On the extension's Chrome Web Store page, click Add to Chrome, then Add extension.
2. Click the puzzle-piece Extensions icon in the toolbar and select the pin beside the cursor extension.
3. Click the extension's icon and choose a pack or a single cursor from its gallery.
4. Press F5 (or Cmd+R on macOS) on any tab that was open before you installed it; extensions only reach already-open pages after a reload.
5. To go back to the normal pointer, open the extension's popup and choose its reset or default option, or switch the extension off in chrome://extensions.

Some sites set their own cursor, such as browser games, map tools and design apps, and those usually win over the extension. If a pointer looks blurry, try a smaller size in the extension's settings; large images are scaled, and edges soften on high-resolution screens.

What permissions do fun extensions ask for, and which are fine?

Most fun extensions need broad site access because they change something on every page you visit, which is normal for their job. The warning sign is a permission that has nothing to do with the fun, such as your browsing history, downloads or management of other extensions.

Chrome adds a safety net here: if an update to an installed extension asks for new permissions that trigger a warning, Chrome turns the extension off until you approve the change (Chrome's developer documentation describes this). Read that prompt before you click Enable. See our plain-English guide to extension permissions for what each warning covers.

Which extensions make watching videos more fun?

Video Speed Controller is the most entertaining utility in this list: it lets you change speed on any HTML5 video, not only YouTube, in finer steps than most site players offer. Try half speed on a dance or guitar tutorial, or speed through a slow recipe video.

Its default keyboard shortcuts, which you can remap in the extension's options (see the project's public source code):

• S slows down and D speeds up in small steps.
• R resets to normal speed.
• Z rewinds and X jumps forward by a few seconds.
• G switches to your saved preferred speed.
• V shows or hides the small speed overlay on the video.

For watching while you do something else, use a floating player. YouTube PiP keeps YouTube playing in a small window on top of other tabs, while Floating PiP Player tries to do the same for nearly any site's video. You can also do it without an extension: on YouTube, right-click the video twice and choose Picture in picture, or click the media controls icon in Chrome's toolbar while something plays and select the picture-in-picture button.

The built-in route is enough for occasional use. The extensions earn their place if you use a floating window daily or watch on sites where the right-click trick does not appear.

Do volume booster extensions actually work, and are they safe?

Yes, they work: a booster captures a tab's audio and amplifies it past Chrome's normal maximum, which helps with quiet videos and weak laptop speakers. They are safe in terms of data if they only ask for tab audio, but high boost levels distort sound and can damage small speakers or your hearing.

The six boosters we list differ mainly in controls:

• Volume Master: one slider and nothing else. The easiest to understand.
• Volume Booster: a simple way to push tab audio past the usual limit.
• Sound Booster: adds bass boost and an equaliser for shaping music.
• Bass Volume Booster: equaliser presets built around a bass slider.
• Ultra Volume Booster: focuses on raising volume while keeping sound clean.
• 600% Sound Booster: freemium, with an optional paid EQ and turbo mode on top of the free boost.

Because boosters capture the tab's sound, a common quirk is that fullscreen video can behave differently while a boost is active, and only the tab you boosted is affected. If a video refuses to go fullscreen, turn the boost off for that tab. Install one booster at a time; two capturing the same tab will conflict.

What fun can you have in Chrome without installing anything?

Quite a lot. Chrome has a built-in game, theme tools and tab styling that cover some of what fun extensions do, with no extra permissions at all.

• The Dino game: type chrome://dino in the address bar and press Space to start. It is the same runner game Chrome shows when you are offline; Space or the up arrow jumps and the down arrow ducks.
• Themes and backgrounds: the Customize Chrome panel on the New Tab page, covered earlier, changes colours and wallpaper.
• Colourful tab groups: right-click a tab, choose Add tab to new group, then give the group a name (emoji work too) and one of Chrome's group colours.
• Picture-in-picture: the media controls icon in the toolbar floats most videos without an add-on.
• Chrome Web Store themes: the store's themes section offers full visual themes that only change colours and images, not page content.

If one of these covers what you wanted, skip the extension. Every add-on you do not install is one fewer thing that can be sold, updated badly or slow down your tabs.

How do you keep fun extensions from slowing Chrome down?

Keep only the ones you use weekly, limit their site access, and check Chrome's Task Manager if things feel sluggish. Fun extensions are small, but several of them running on every page add up.

1. Open Chrome's Task Manager from the three-dot menu > More tools > Task manager, or press Shift+Esc on Windows and ChromeOS. Sort by memory to see which extensions use the most.
2. Go to chrome://extensions and switch off anything you have not used this week with its toggle; switching off keeps your settings for later.
3. For extensions you only need sometimes, click Details and set Site access to On click, so they run only when you press their icon.
4. Open Settings > Privacy and security > Safety Check; Chrome flags extensions that have been removed from the Web Store or are marked as malware.
5. Unpin extensions you rarely click from the puzzle-piece menu to keep the toolbar clean.

These steps work the same on Windows, macOS, Linux and ChromeOS. Chrome on Android and iPhone does not support extensions, so none of these picks will follow you to your phone. Find more ideas on the Find Extensions blog.