Google Chrome comes with its own built-in security measures to warn you about dangerous websites and weed out phishing scams, but it never hurts to have more (or better) safeguards when you're browsing.

We only get so much time in this life, and yours is running out, friend. That might seem scary, but it doesn't have to be - it can be motivating. Sometimes you just need a reminder that you need to make it count. This tool sets your Google Chrome homepage and any new blank tabs you open to a clock slowly ticking toward your demise.

Last year, I spent a chunk of time playing around with different browsers. Microsoft Edge, much to much dismay, got a run for a couple of weeks. I mucked around with the early days of the Firefox Quantum beta. And then, just like everyone else, I went back to Chrome.

But even though I returned to the home of Google, I've still been angling for something different. And over the last few weeks, I found myself using Firefox more and more, until the browser finally became my default option across all platforms.

Letting you mute entire websites in Chrome may be the best upgrade Google ever made to the browser, but it could still be better. Sure, muting every site with annoying pop-up videos is great, but what if you didn't have to deal any audio at all? Thanks to AutoMute, you'll never have to hear another peep out of your browser ever again.

There are plenty of extensions you can use to manage any organisational "difficulties" you have in Chrome. Here are a few of the ones I use to keep me sane.

A few years ago I moved across the country, a time zone away from my family and most of my friends. Moving across the country comes with a number of challenges, but the biggest of those ended up being the whole friends thing. Going from a decently large network of friends to knowing that one guy I hung out with at a party a few years ago caused some serious FOMO when my friends back home were going out or having a movie night.

I'm not a big fan of browsing the web on my phone, mainly due to my browser's terrible control scheme. Everything is too spaced out. The keyboard's at the bottom of the vertically oriented display, essential controls are tucked into hard to reach corners, and I don't want to risk dropping my phone by performing a little one-handed gymnastics for a new tab.

If you've been using Google Chrome to store all of your logins and passwords, that's great - a lot better than scribbling your passwords on sticky notes and attaching them to your desktop monitor or laptop. Third-party password managers are even better (cross-platform, in many cases), and a new Chrome setting now makes it easy to move all of of your browser-saved passwords to a new app.

Frozen webpages, a precursor to the ever-frustrating dead tab, can be intensely frustrating -- all the more so when you can't accurately identify what's causing the slowdown or random dead tab. If you want to learn more about what windows or processes are demanding too much of your memory and processing power, technology site gHacks suggests you look under the hood of Google Chrome using its built-in task manager.

Reddit's endless stream of memes, comments, and self-referential jokes can be intimidating to newcomers. Even if you've been reading the site for years there's still plenty of new subreddits to discover. But no matter how well you know Reddit, you could be having an even better experience by installing a few extra Chrome extensions.

Rest, my child. CNN's autoplay videos can't hurt you any more. In the latest public version of Chrome, you can just right-click any tab and select "mute site".

You hate it as much as I do: that little box that appears whenever you visit a news site or blog, asking for permission to bug you with notification boxes for stuff you don't care about. Instead of throwing up your hands in defeat and learning to live with the annoyance, you can stop sites from bothering you altogether. Here's how.

Since its debut, Chrome has grown in popularity, though its once-stellar reputation has taken a bit of a hit as of late. Examples of Chrome-only sites are more and more common, reminiscent of the days when Microsoft's Internet Explorer dominated the web browser market. It's been shown to be a massive memory hog as well, slowing down machines as users create more and more tabs. If you're looking for a change this 2018, why not start with your browser? Ditch Chrome and switch to its longtime competitor, Mozilla Firefox. It's just as fast, if not faster, than Chrome, and integrates tools to boost your privacy online while making it easier to share and save everything you find on the web.

If you're using multiple accounts in Chrome, you know how useful it can be to keep items like your personal and professional emails separate. Unfortunately, if you use one a lot more than the other, it's a hassle to switch from one to the next every day. By following a few guidelines and creating some shortcuts, you can ensure you're opening the right Google Chrome profile every time, saving you the annoyance of bouncing between them.

At some point, publishers at a lot of the sites I frequent decided that it would be a good idea to start using autoplay videos. While I think their thought is that when the video starts playing I'll somehow be drawn in by their captivating host and majestic background music, the result is often me getting frightened by the sudden blast of sound, fumbling around to figure out how to stop the video, and then cursing the site creator and vowing to never come to their site again.

That is until the next day when I repeat the process.

Apps opening automatically from Chrome is supposed to be a convenience - but sometimes it's just annoying. Dealing with an intrusive iTunes window when you just wanted to see an app screenshot can be irksome, especially since iTunes doesn't even handle apps any more. Sometimes you just want to copy an email address, or download that torrent file instead of running it in Transmission. When apps open based on the links you hit, you can thank your browser's "protocol handlers". They're helpful, to a point, but you can get rid of the more annoying ones by following a few steps (or deleting some cookies).

Price matching is one of the easiest ways to score yourself a discount at retail. Do your research, find the best possible price you can and march into the store with your dollar-saving knowledge. But this little Google Chrome trick makes it exceptionally easy to deceive retailers about exactly how much a product costs at other stores.

I wish I knew this when I was working in retail.

You might be unfortunate enough to have an annoying coworker in your vicinity. You know, the one that talks about how much he loves eating quiche for breakfast. Let's call him Chad. While you (probably) can't put Chad's headphones in jello to get back at him for pinning last week's soccer loss on your bum knee, you can slowly drive Chad mad where it hurts the most: in his precious YouTube goofing-off time.

The writing has been on the wall for FTP for years now and while it'll continue to serve an important role for the web behind the scenes, a browser isn't the best way to interact with the protocol. Debian will give it the punt in a couple of months and now Google will soon flag FTP sites as "not secure".