When you're in the middle of a stressful workday, it's easy to forget about some of the tiny practices that can help you get to a healthy mental state. But what if the next time you open a new tab, you get a reminder to do just that?
These Chrome extensions replace the default New Tab page with wellness tools for meditation, breathwork, journaling, mood tracking, stretching, and affirmations. You don't need to use this every time you open a new tab, but once in a while, that gentle nudge is all you'll need to get out of a negative mindset.
Oasis is an all-in-one extension to access multiple wellness practices and tools whenever you open a new tab. It displays a classic painting, along with the current date and time. You can access its main three elements with a click:
- Journal to write your thoughts and feelings, which you can edit multiple times throughout the day. You'll also see a calendar of when you wrote in the journal and when you didn't.
- Guided meditation and breathing sessions to reduce stress and anxiety, as well as clear the mind. The animated breathwork exercises are especially helpful in remembering to take a break and regroup yourself during a stressful workday.
- Mood journal to check in with how you are feeling and why you are feeling that way at the moment.
Oasis will track your inputs and offer statistics whenever you want. It's not the best app in terms of design and use, but if you're looking for an all-in-one solution to different wellness practices, this extension does the job well. The premium version of Oasis also has more elements like stressors and relievers, guided envisioning exercises, etc.
Download: Oasis for Chrome (Free)
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2. Ponder (Chrome): Quickly Write Different Journal Entries in a New Tab
You know that daily journaling is a good habit, but actually making it a part of your life is the difficult part. Ponder tries to make it easy by prompting you to write a journal entry every time you open a new tab. It's actually one of the coolest micro-journaling apps to cultivate the practice.
Ponder has two major modes for how to write an entry: short answers to daily prompts and long journaling space. You can easily switch between them at any point. For example, the short answers include the categories of daily productivity, daily lists, and daily reflection, where Ponder will ask you a question to prompt an answer from you about that subject. But if you're in the mood to write a longer diary entry, switch to the categories of creative, self-reflection, or free writing. Again, each of these will include a prompt you can answer, so you aren't struggling to figure out what to write.
If it gets too much, you can stop Ponder from prompting you to write an entry in every new tab. You can revisit past Entries at any time and view them by calendar dates. Ponder also gathers analytics about your journaling, such as your consistency, total number of words written, etc.
Download: Ponder for Chrome (Free)
3. NimbusMind (Chrome, Firefox, Android, iOS): 5-Minute Guided Meditations in New Tab
NimbusMind offers a series of 5-minute guided meditations in your new tab that can help you tackle any problems or situations you're currently facing. The current list includes short guides for anxiety event, general anxiety, body scan, emergency, focus, happiness, relax, morning, let it go, sleeping, walking, depression, confidence, healthy aging, relationships, sensuality, and life changes. It's the perfect type of quick and minimalist meditation for mindfulness and stress relief.
The meditations are limited to 5 minutes in the free version, but you can unlock 2, 3, 10, and 20 minute versions in NimbusMind Premium for $9.99 annually. The Chrome extension also offers two of its meditation series (basics of meditation and first steps to meditation) for free, while other series are available to subscribers.
Apart from these meditations, NimbusMind also offers soothing background sounds to help you relax or focus. It also has a few background musical tracks. In the free version, you can only choose sounds of a river or birds in a forest and background music for meditation, but you can unlock several other ambient sounds and musical tracks in the paid version.
Download: NimbusMind for Chrome | Firefox (Free)
Download: NimbusMind for Android | iOS (Free)
4. Zen Mind (Chrome): Reminders and Guides for Stretching and Healthy Habits
Zen Mind gives you multiple tools to not only boost your mental health but also your physical health. Like several other extensions, it includes a meditation zone for 5, 10, or 15 minutes, where you practice mindful breathing with soothing background sounds. You can also play any of the ambient calming sounds without entering the meditation zone.
Much like other apps offer guided meditations, Zen Mind offers guided stretches. It's important to do stretching exercises to fix your posture and improve your mood, especially for those who spend several hours working on a computer. Zen Mind also offers to give reminders (30 minutes, one hour, or two hours) to drink water, correct your posture, do stretches, eat fruit, or meditate.
The app's dashboard asks you to write one task that you want to focus on right now. You can also enter the "Focus Mode" for a deep working session.
Download: Zen Mind for Chrome (Free)
5. Affirmations Flow (Chrome): Positive Affirmations in Every New Tab
There is a prevalent school of thought that our mind too often draws us into self-doubt and pessimistic views, and we need a periodic gentle nudge away from the negativity. Positive affirmations can boost your motivation, help you feel calmer, and realign your mind to know your goals and discard intrusive thoughts.
Affirmations Flow is a simple Chrome extension created by positivity coach Geeta Pandey to help anyone get that gentle nudge every time they open a new tab in their browser. Set against a background of colorful bubbles dancing on screen, you'll see a random new positive affirmation with each new tab that you open.
The extension comes with a few positivity affirmations built in but encourages you to add your own custom affirmations that matter to you. It has a helpful ability to import a spreadsheet of affirmations (or export the custom affirmations you create in the app as a custom spreadsheet). You'll find plenty of free affirmation templates online to get started on this exercise.
Download: Affirmations Flow for Chrome (Free)
Step Away From the Screen
As good as all these wellness-oriented extensions are for your mental health, they don't mention the best thing you can do when you're overwhelmed: step away from the screen. Get up, move around, breathe some fresh air, and give your eyes and brain a break. There is nothing as restorative as movement.
