Context - an extension which manages other extensions

Google Chrome is the most popular browser because of the features that it offers through its innumerable extensions. When we need some feature we simply install the extension for that from Chrome WebStore, but we may not need them all the time and some of them will be used only once in a while. Like that, we end up installing so many extensions which we do not use all the time.

The drawback of having too many extensions installed is that it will eat up the memory and will make Google Chrome slow; sometimes it will even cause the browser to crash. While these extensions offer rich features and utilities that help us in many ways, too many of them can be quite bothering by impacting the performance of the browser.

The need of the hour is to have a feature or app that can organize and regulate these extensions such that they do not interfere with the browser’s performance when not active.

What is Context?

Context is an extension which is used to organize the extensions installed in Google Chrome. You might be wondering that this is yet another extension. Well, this extension lets you create groups of extensions for different needs. For example, if you work with Google Drive often, you can group all the extensions needed for Google Drive functioning.

If you have a lot of extensions installed (Shift + Esc) you can check in Google Chrome task manager to see how much memory is used by each extension. Using this you would be able to determine which extension is slowing down the performance of the browser.

How to disable unused Chrome extensions

Using the Context extension, you can create different groups of extensions and sort them. You just have to select the group and Context loads only the group of extensions that needs to be enabled at a time. Let us see how to organize extensions using Context using simple steps:-

Install the “Context” extension from the Chrome store. Once it is installed successfully, you will see that a new jigsaw piece icon added to the Google Taskbar (adjacent to the three lines to access the options).
Next, set up the group extension options. Clicking on the jigsaw icon (“Context” icon) you will be able to see all the extensions installed in Chrome in a tabular form. You can also view them by going to setting, then extensions and clicking on “Context Options”.
If you wish to include apps into the group, you can go for the “Advanced options”.
Click on the “New Context” button at the bottom of the screen. Give a name to the group you want to create and choose from the icons displayed.
Drag the extensions listed in the table to the group that you have created.
Context gives you the flexibility to add one extension to multiple groups. Click on the cross button if you want to remove an extension from the group. You are also allowed to change the order of extensions and groups.
When all configuration has been done, click on the “Save” button.