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Because everyone uses the Internet in a different way, there’s no such thing as a one-size-fits-all browser. The feature set one person needs might be too little or too much for another person. Extensions for browsers like Firefox and Chrome go a long way toward solving this problem, but installing and managing extensions is a pain, and can be an overly complicated solution to often-simple problems.
That’s where bookmarklets come in.
A bookmarklet is a snippet of JavaScript—a tiny, self-contained program that can be stored in a hypertext link and saved as a bookmark. Later, when you click the bookmarklet, the code is executed by your browser, and something happens. What exactly happens is different for each bookmarklet—some reorganize the information on the page, some integrate with popular web services like YouTube and Google, and some are just for fun. In this article, we’re going to show you 32 of our favorite bookmarklets, and tell you how they work.
If you like this list, check out our 50 Kick-Ass Websites You Need to Know About!
Play any song, any time
With the Grooveselect bookmarklet, if you know the name of a song, you can listen to it. Harnessing the power of Grooveshark, the too-good-to-be-true, no-seriously-how-haven't-these-guys-been-sued-into-oblivion-yet music discovery service, Grooveselect will look up and play any song that you've highlighted in the browser. Better yet, it plays in the background, so it doesn't interrupt your regularly scheduled browsing. To stop playback, just make sure nothing is selected and click the bookmarklet again.
Keep URLs short
If you’re in the habit of sharing a lot of links (Twitter users, bloggers, we’re looking at you), you know that URL shorteners like Bit.ly can be a huge help in keeping your character-count down and your article uncluttered. Unfortunately, it can be a pain to manually enter each link in the Bit.ly homepage. The Bit.ly bookmarklet solves this very problem. When you click it, a sidebar appears on the site you’re currently viewing, which shows you the shortened URL for that site, as well as a selection of relevant tweets.
Reformat the web
One of the most well-known bookmarklets, Readability allows you to reformat any article to your own viewing standards. Do you like your articles to look like a newspaper with small margins? Readability can handle that. Do you like large, white text on a black background? Readability's got that covered, too. Your wish is Readability’s command.
Find like-minded folk
People who don't understand Twitter think it's all about sharing what you had for lunch, or other miscellaneous trivia. The truth is, it's about having conversations about the things that interest you, and Sweetter helps you find people on the web who are talking about the things you care about. If you like a certain website, or a certain blogger, just go to that content, click the Sweetter bookmarklet, and you'll see the 10 most recent tweets about the site.
Comments are closed on this article
Dennis Hully
September 09, 2010 at 3:58pm
I can download files, however, I can't play them. What media player recognizes these file extensions?
shoalcreek5
December 04, 2010 at 11:09pm
Most any media player can play .mp4 files. VLC player from videolan.org will play almost any movie file, including .flv as long as you have the necessary codecs installed.
bllreyn
July 25, 2010 at 9:18pm
Grooveselect works for me. Didn't work at first and then I realized that Noscript was blocking it. Once I allowed it I had to highlight the song again and click the bookmarklet.
nattybohman
July 21, 2010 at 7:51pm
It's a shame too. After reading the article, the one I was most excited about was Grooveselect and the bookmarklet doesn't even work.
Did you guys test this stuff before writing the article?
At least I found out about the website Grooveshark.com - very cool site.
dougarb
July 08, 2010 at 3:37pm
but thanks for the tip on grooveshark, i seemed to have missed that one
great selection, even charlie patton, and sun ra and jelly roll morton
Watcher
July 03, 2010 at 3:29pm
Hello to all my fellow brethren: The Bookmarklet - GrooveSelect; Does anyone know how to query the server without having to find the song you want to listen on a page?. So, I'm looking for a way to manually enter a song and artist, then I can highlight the sound and then hit the GrooveSelect BookMarklet. Search boxes do not seem to do the job? Thanks for any and all replies.
Bwana
June 30, 2010 at 9:41pm
GMapToGPX bookmarklet will create a GPX file from a Google Maps route so you can upload it to your GPS. Very primo.
DReborn
June 28, 2010 at 11:54am
I dragged the grooveselect bookmarklet into my firefox bookmark toolbar, highlight a song text I want to hear (use sombody - Kings of Leon), and then click the grooveselect bookmarket. Nothing happens.
any ideas? fully updated FF
gregparsns
June 06, 2010 at 6:58pm
Perfect for when you are surfing around and want to tell someone (or yoursef) about a page you just found.
No need to bring up full on Gmail, just po up a small Gmail This window.
I learned of it here http://lifehacker.com/190122/gmail-this-bookmarklet
flatlinebb
June 04, 2010 at 11:06pm
You don't mention the link in the article, and there is no official bookmarklet on LMGTFY website. Double FAIL!
Sparx10
June 05, 2010 at 3:14am
LetMeGoogleThatForYou <--- That's the bookmarklet right there, just select text and press it. It's not very useful though, because it just searches the highlighted text on LMGTFY and doesn't give a link. I think it's just better to go to the site and make your own URL.
JoeBobJohn
June 02, 2010 at 7:35pm
I love the PwnYouTube bookmarklet! However the article linked to the main page rather than the bookmarklet. This is the direct link to get the bookmarklet for downloading videos from YouTube
http://deturl.com/bookmarklet-to-directly-download-videos-from-youtube.asp
By the way, it also works on DailyMotion and Facebook.
Sparx10
June 02, 2010 at 7:26pm
GrooveSelect is AWESOME :D It even found these semi-rare German rock (not Rammstein :P).
Try these (if you like hard rock then you'll probably like these :D)
1. Oomph! - Du Spielst Gott
2. Oomph! - Beim Ersten Mal Tut's Immer Weh
3. Oomph! - Ego
4. Oomph! - Träumst Du
And no, they don't sing about the devil, Hitler, or nazism like everyone stereotypes -.-
herrleelee
June 02, 2010 at 3:56pm
Is it me or some of these do not work with chrome, for example vozme and switter.
Danielt876
June 02, 2010 at 12:13pm
The password one seems a little useless, if you were really that bad with typing your passwords then you could just type them into the search bar, or address bar, then copy and paste it into the password box.
wootwoot
June 02, 2010 at 11:05am
Nice list. I stumbled across http://www.marklets.com
the other day. I think it's probably the biggest list of bookmarklets I've ever
seen. I found the marklets.com bookmarklet (mentioned in the article) http://www.marklets.com/bookmarklets/Marklets.com.aspx the most useful. It lets you just search their database right from the
sites you're currently visiting. Pretty cool trick and you don't need
to bookmark a huge list of bookmarklets.
morphar
June 02, 2010 at 5:57am
Thank you for mentioning my project: slapnotes.com
And thank you for a great article, with some great bookmarklets! :-)
Best regards
Dan
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Slapnotes.com - stop bookmarking, start slapping notes
