The Best Chrome Extensions for Google Drive

If you don't know Google Drive, you should. It's one of the few purely perfect (or damn close) Web services out there—enough so that PCMag gave it a perfect 5-star score in our review. This combo of productivity suite with word processer (Docs), spreadsheet (Sheets), and presentations (Slides), coupled with online storage and file syncing between PCs and mobile devices has quickly become an excellent collaborative tool for any home or office.

And it's all free if you only use the baseline 15GB of online storage. You can upgrade the storage for personal use or upgrade to a business-oriented version of Google Drive called Google Apps for Work, which incorporates even more Google tools, like Gmail and Google Calendar, under your business's domain name.

Naturally, all this great Google stuff works particularly well in the company's Chrome browser. It's no longer our absolute favorite browser (thanks to major upgrades in Firefox), but Chrome definitely has a following. And with a plug-in architecture, it's got plenty of add-ons and extensions available in the Chrome Web Store. Naturally, a lot of these work directly with Google Drive. Here's a look at the extensions you should consider.

Checker Plus for Google Drive

Checker Plus is a must for its extensions that work with Gmail, Google Calendar, and of course, Google Drive. From a single icon on the Chrome toolbar you get full access to every file you have stored on Drive—plus your images on Google Photos as well. There's no faster way to search and browse your files without going to Drive site itself.

AbleBits
This developer has not one but about eight amazing add-ons for Google Sheets, including a duplicate remover, merge sheets, merge values, advanced find and replace, random number generator, and more. You pay for these same extra for Microsoft Excel, so enjoy the cost of free.

Save to Google Drive

It's not always as easy as it should be to add to Google Drive—especially if you see something online that needs storing. This extension can stick the content of an entire webpage or just individual elements like texts and images, directly into your Google Drive for later access. Yes, it'll even handle PDFs, Microsoft Office documents (automatically converting them to Doc/Sheets/Slides format if you desire), even audio and video. All you need to do is right-click or hold-click the item in question and select "Save to Google Drive," naturally.

HelloFax

Faxing is the most antiquated, ridiculous "technology" still in heavy use today. If you're stuck still sending documents this way—even docs in Google Drive—you probably should invest in a HelloFax account. Luckily, if your fax needs are light, you get to send 50 free pages in the first six months of using it, directly from Google Drive to whatever land-line nightmare is on the other end. Base price is $10 a month to send 300 pages per month.

DocuSign

You may already know DocuSign as a primo way of signing electronic documents. This extension brings that signing function fully into Google Docs (and Gmail). With the extension alone, you get free unlimited signings if it's just you, then you upgrade if anyone else has to sign. Base cost is $10 a month for five signatures.

Drive Migrator
Got multiple Google Drive accounts? Or just want to move everything from one to another for a not-so-clean break? It's a pain without this extension. It helps you transfer all the files from one account to the other (sans sharing settings).

Music Player for Google Drive

If you store a lot of audio files like MP3s, AACs, OGG, or WAV in your Google Drive account, you don't have to download them again to listen to them. This extension puts a player right in the browser. It even uses the assigned ID3 tags and displays album cover art.

Office Editing for Docs, Sheets & Slides

You can store almost any file in Google Drive, but if it's a Word Doc, it can't be opened with Google Docs without getting converted to Google Docs format. UNLESS...you install this extension. It lets you open and edit and save DOC, DOCX, XLS, XLSX, PPT, and PPTX files without permanently converting to Google's format—but that is an option. (AwesomeDrive is another popular option with the same features.)

Google Drive Quick Create
About as ultra-simple as it gets: This extension sticks an icon on the Chrome toolbar, and with a click opens a blank doc, sheet, slide, or drawing space in Google Drive.

Draftback

Wondering about that last change you made to a Google Doc? It's possible to look up the revision history, but Draftback makes it a breeze, essentially playing back all your changes for you, keystroke by keystroke. Here's how. You can even make the playback public to play on a site, showing the whole writing process.

Google Drive Plug-in for Microsoft Office

This one is a cheat—it's not really for Chrome—but worth mentioning. This is a download you install that runs in Microsoft Office itself—but makes it easy to save, edit, and share MS Office documents that you have shared in Google Drive. Making the files in Drive into attachments on Outlook messages is an option. It even lets you move files around in Drive, all while using Word or Excel on the desktop. Note that you can only use it to open/edit MS Office files—try to open a Google Doc/Sheets/Slides file from within Office, and it'll just open the file in the browser. It won't convert it for editing. (For that, you have to go into Google Drive, select a file, then download it. That will convert it to MS Office format.

Spanning Stats

This does a quick look at your Google Drive contents and spits out a chart showing you just what's in there taking up space. It's more a Web service than an add-on for Chrome—you can even use it in other browsers. Just give it permission and it'll check the stats.

Want more extensions that work great with Google's tools? Read The Best Chrome Extensions for Gmail.

About Our Expert

Eric Griffith

Senior Editor, Features

My Experience

I've been writing about computers, the internet, and technology professionally since 1992, more than half of that time with PCMag. I arrived at the end of the print era of PC Magazine as a senior writer. I served for a time as managing editor of business coverage before settling back into the features team for the last decade and a half. I write features on all tech topics, plus I handle several special projects, including the Readers' Choice and Business Choice surveys and yearly coverage of the Best ISPs and Best Gaming ISPs, Best Products of the Year, and Best Brands (plus the Best Brands for Tech Support, Longevity, and Reliability).

I started in tech publishing right out of college, writing and editing stories about hardware and development tools. I migrated to software and hardware coverage for families, and I spent several years exclusively writing about the then-burgeoning technology called Wi-Fi. I was on the founding staff of several magazines, including Windows Sources, FamilyPC, and Access Internet Magazine. All of which are now defunct, and it's not my fault. I have freelanced for publications as diverse as Sony Style, Playboy.com, and Flux. I got my degree at Ithaca College in, of all things, television/radio. But I minored in writing so I'd have a future.

In my long-lost free time, I wrote some novels, a couple of which are not just on my hard drive: BETA TEST ("an unusually lighthearted apocalyptic tale," according to Publishers' Weekly) and a YA book called KALI: THE GHOSTING OF SEPULCHER BAY. Go get them on Kindle.

I work from my home in Ithaca, NY, and did it long before pandemics made it cool.

The Technology I Use

My first computer was a Laser 128, an Apple II-compatible clone with an integrated keyboard, matched with an eye-straining monochrome green monitor. I used it to type papers in college for other people for money...until I discovered the Mac SE in the college computer room. That changed my life. My first cellphone was a Samsung Uproar—the silver one with the built-in MP3 player from the Napster days (the pre-iPod era).

I use an iPhone 15 Pro hourly and an iPad Air infrequently (but I'm always in the market for a cheap Android tablet). I have a PlayStation 5 just to play Spider-Man, and several Windows machines, including a work-issued Lenovo ThinkPad. I talk to Alexa and Siri all day long. I do the majority of my computing on a 15-inch LG Gram laptop attached to a Thunderbolt hub to run a multi-monitor setup—I overdid it on the power needed to simply work from home.

I'm most at home in Microsoft Word after decades of writing there. More and more, I turn to services like Google Docs, using tools like Grammarly. I use Google's Chrome browser due to an addiction to several extensions I think I can't live without, but probably could. I use Excel extensively on data-intensive stories, but for chart creation, we've switched over entirely to using Infogram for interactive features that are hard to find elsewhere. I do a lot of graphics work for my stories, but limit myself to the free and amazing Paint.NET software to edit images.

I'm a firm evangelist for using the cloud for backup and syncing of files; I'm primarily using Dropbox, which has never failed me, but I also have redundant setups on Microsoft OneDrive, plus extra picture backups on Amazon Photos and iCloud. Why take chances? For entertainment, mine is a streaming-only household—my kid has never seen network TV and barely been exposed to commercials, thanks to Roku and Amazon Music. The house is peppered with smart speakers from Amazon for instant gratification and control of smart home devices like multiple Wyze cameras and Nest Protect smoke detectors. I've got accounts on all the major social networks, to my horror. I have a robot vacuum for each floor of the house. I want a 3D printer, but not sure what I'd use it for.

Read the latest from Eric Griffith

Read full bio