Chrome Extensions take too much work to toggle on and off, and it needs to change

I was installing the Dark Reader Chrome extension for late-night Google Docs work yesterday and I noticed something that hadn’t quite annoyed me until now. You see, most of the time when I install an extension, it stays on indefinitely. However, with something like Dark Reader, I like to toggle it on and off during the day and night to get the best experience.

When I clicked the Extensions puzzle piece icon I was immediately puzzled – Chrome doesn’t have a quick way to do this! Instead, I had to click the three dots “more” options button to the right of it, click “Manage extension” and then toggle it from there. I can’t tell you how weird this is from a UX standpoint, but maybe I’m alone who thinks so.

Despite this terrible accessibility setup, Google may have a mind to change this in the near future – at least, that’s my hope. With the 2023 Chrome Refresh that’s been rolling out in stages, many UI elements for the popular browser have received a makeover. Icons, toggles, Material You tones, and more – it really does feel like someone at Google is paying attention to this kind of stuff.

I get that this isn’t something most users would need, but adding this as well as a “Toggle all” button to quickly kill all extensions for troubleshooting purposes without having to install the “Disable all extensions” extension from the Chrome Web Store, would be a lifesaver. I’m interested in collecting some of your thoughts on this – would you like a quick and easy one-step toggle for an extension at the top-right of the browser, or do you perform this action so infrequently that you’re cool with clicking through several other steps to enable and disable them?