A tab manager that promised to organize everything ended up adding its own layer of clutter I had to manage on top of my actual tabs. A password-strength checker duplicated a feature my password manager already handled quietly in the background. And a link-preview extension that was supposed to save time actually slowed down every page load by a noticeable half second.
After removing all three, my browser felt faster and I genuinely haven’t reached for any of them since. The pattern I noticed: each one solved a problem I didn’t actually have, using a feature built into something I already had installed.
Before installing the next extension, it’s worth checking whether the browser or another tool already does the job quietly.