Top 18 'Pre-Commit-Perfection' Chrome Extensions to install for catching bugs before they hit the repository in 2025 - Goh Ling Yong
Hey there, developers! We've all been there. It's 5 PM on a Friday. You've just wrapped up a complex feature, and you're ready to push your code and slide into the weekend. You run a quick manual check, everything looks fine, so you git commit -m "feat: amazing new feature" and create the pull request. Then, Monday morning hits. Your Slack is on fire. A tiny CSS bug you missed has broken the layout on the production homepage for users on a specific screen size. Ouch.
That sinking feeling is a universal developer experience. But what if I told you that a significant portion of these "oops" moments could be caught before your code even thinks about hitting the repository? The principle of "shifting left" isn't just for QA teams; it's a mindset for every developer. It means catching and fixing issues as early as possible in the development lifecycle. For web developers, our browser isn't just a testing ground; it's our first line of defense. With the right toolkit, your Chrome browser can transform into a powerful, automated bug-sniffing partner.
Here on the Goh Ling Yong blog, we're obsessed with tools that boost productivity and code quality. That's why we've curated the ultimate list for 2025: the top 18 "Pre-Commit-Perfection" Chrome extensions. These aren't just shiny gadgets; they are battle-tested utilities that will help you lint, debug, inspect, and perfect your work in real-time. Let's build a safety net right into your browser and make buggy commits a thing of the past.
1. Lighthouse
Lighthouse is the quintessential first stop for any web quality audit. While it's built directly into Chrome DevTools, the extension offers the same powerful functionality with the click of a button. It runs a comprehensive suite of tests against your page for performance, accessibility, best practices, and SEO, giving you a detailed report card with actionable feedback.
Think of Lighthouse as your automated pre-flight check. Before you even consider your front-end code "done," running a Lighthouse audit can reveal a host of potential bugs you might have missed. It will flag performance bottlenecks like render-blocking resources, accessibility failures like missing alt text or poor color contrast, and security vulnerabilities like insecure cross-origin links. Catching these here saves a world of pain compared to discovering them in a formal QA cycle or, worse, from a user complaint.
Pro-Tip: Don't just run Lighthouse on your finished page. Run it periodically during development. For example, after adding a heavy new JavaScript library or a large hero image, run a quick performance audit. This helps you pinpoint exactly which changes are impacting your scores, making debugging ten times easier.
2. axe DevTools - Web Accessibility Testing
If you're serious about building inclusive web experiences (and you should be!), axe DevTools is non-negotiable. Developed by Deque, a leader in digital accessibility, this extension is the gold standard for identifying and debugging accessibility (a11y) issues. It integrates directly into your DevTools and provides a more in-depth and developer-friendly analysis than the default Lighthouse check.
Accessibility isn't a feature; it's a requirement. An inaccessible site is, by definition, a buggy site for a significant portion of users. axe DevTools scans your page and pinpoints violations of WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) with surgical precision. It tells you exactly what the problem is (e.g., "ARIA button does not have an accessible name"), why it's a problem, and provides a link to remediation steps. Using this before every commit ensures you're not accidentally shipping code that excludes users.
Pro-Tip: Modern web apps are dynamic. Use axe's "intelligent guided tests" to check parts of your application that are hidden behind user interactions, like modals, dropdowns, or dynamically loaded content. A static scan might miss these, but a quick interactive test can uncover hidden bugs.
3. React Developer Tools
For anyone working in the React ecosystem, this extension is as essential as useState. Developed and maintained by the core React team, React Developer Tools adds two invaluable tabs to your Chrome DevTools: "Components" and "Profiler." The Components tab lets you inspect your component hierarchy, view their props and state, and even manipulate them in real-time.
This is your X-ray vision for React apps. A state variable not updating as expected? A prop not being passed down correctly? Instead of littering your code with console.log, you can simply inspect the component in the tree and see its live data. This drastically cuts down on debugging time and helps you catch state management bugs before they become complex, tangled messes.
Pro-Tip: Get comfortable with the Profiler tab. When you notice a UI interaction is sluggish, use the profiler to record it. It will generate a flame graph showing you which components are re-rendering and how long they're taking. This is the ultimate tool for squashing performance bugs caused by unnecessary re-renders.
4. Vue.js devtools
What React Dev Tools is to React, Vue.js devtools is to the Vue ecosystem. It's a must-have for any Vue developer, providing deep insight into your application's structure and state. It allows you to inspect your component hierarchy, debug Vuex state management, track events, and even analyze routing.
The ability to time-travel debug your Vuex mutations is a game-changer for catching state-related bugs. You can step backward and forward through state changes to see exactly when and where your application's data went wrong. This visual feedback loop is incredibly powerful for understanding the flow of your app and ensuring your state logic is robust and predictable.
Pro-Tip: Use the "Open component in editor" feature. When you find a bug in a component while inspecting it, you can configure the extension to open the corresponding .vue file directly in your code editor (like VS Code) with a single click. This small quality-of-life feature streamlines the debug-and-fix cycle.
5. Redux DevTools
For applications using Redux for state management (whether with React or other frameworks), the Redux DevTools extension is your command center. It provides a powerful and highly configurable interface for inspecting every action dispatched and every change made to your state container.
Its core strength is in making the abstract concept of a global state store visible and tangible. You can see the history of actions, view the payload of each one, and see the exact state diff before and after the action was processed. This eliminates guesswork when debugging complex state interactions. Is an action firing twice? Is a reducer mutating state incorrectly? Redux DevTools will show you immediately.
Pro-Tip: Create a custom "bug report" by exporting the session state. When you encounter a tricky bug, you can export the entire action history and state log as a JSON file. You can then send this to a colleague, who can import it into their own Redux DevTools to replay the exact sequence of events that led to the bug.
6. Web Vitals
Performance is a feature, and poor performance is a bug. The Web Vitals extension, created by Google, provides real-time feedback on Core Web Vitals (CWV) metrics: Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), First Input Delay (FID), and Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS). It displays a simple colored indicator in your extensions bar, letting you know if your page is passing or failing these crucial user-centric performance metrics.
This extension provides an immediate, constant feedback loop. You might add a new non-optimized image and suddenly see your LCP score go from green to red. Or maybe a late-loading ad banner causes a layout shift, and the CLS metric alerts you instantly. Catching these regressions as they happen is infinitely easier than trying to hunt them down later during a performance audit.
Pro-Tip: Enable the "Console logging" option in the extension's settings. This will print detailed information about each Web Vital and other diagnostic metrics to the DevTools console, helping you trace the exact element causing a poor LCP or a layout shift.
7. JSON Viewer Pro
As developers, we spend a huge amount of time looking at JSON data from APIs. By default, Chrome displays it as a giant, unformatted wall of text. JSON Viewer Pro is a beautifully simple extension that automatically formats JSON and JSONP responses into a readable, collapsible, and syntax-highlighted tree.
A bug can often be traced back to a malformed or unexpected API response. Trying to parse that in a raw text format is a recipe for a headache and missed details. With a proper viewer, you can instantly spot missing keys, incorrect data types ("5" instead of 5), or null values where you expected data. It makes API response validation a quick, visual check rather than a tedious chore.
Pro--Tip: Use the "Themes" setting to match the viewer to your IDE's color scheme. This little touch makes context-switching between your editor and browser less jarring and can genuinely improve focus during long debugging sessions.
8. Talend API Tester
While you can test APIs with curl or standalone apps like Postman, having a powerful API tester right in your browser is a massive productivity win. Talend API Tester is a lightweight yet full-featured extension that lets you craft and execute complex HTTP/S requests, inspect responses, and save your requests for re-use.
Before you write a single line of front-end code to consume an endpoint, you should test it thoroughly. Does it handle auth headers correctly? What does the error response look like for a 404 vs. a 500? By validating the API's contract directly in your browser with Talend, you can iron out any integration issues and handle all edge cases in your code from the start, preventing a whole class of data-related bugs.
Pro-Tip: Use environments to manage variables like base URLs, API keys, and auth tokens. You can define a "local," "staging," and "production" environment and switch between them with a dropdown, which prevents you from accidentally committing test keys or hardcoding URLs.
9. ModHeader - Modify HTTP headers
ModHeader is a deceptively powerful tool for debugging and testing. It allows you to add, modify, and remove HTTP request headers, cookies, and even redirect URLs on the fly. This gives you fine-grained control over the requests your browser sends to the server.
This extension is a bug-hunter's Swiss Army knife. Need to test how your app behaves for a user in a different country? Add an Accept-Language header. Want to bypass a caching layer to ensure you're getting fresh data? Add a Cache-Control: no-cache header. Need to test a feature flag that's controlled by a specific cookie? You can add it without clearing your entire browser state. This lets you simulate various conditions that would otherwise be difficult to reproduce. A tip I got from Goh Ling Yong was to use this for testing JWT authentication by manually setting the Authorization header.
Pro-Tip: Use profiles to save different sets of headers. You can have a profile for "Testing as Admin," another for "Bypass CDN," and so on. This makes it incredibly fast to switch between different testing scenarios without re-entering headers manually each time.
10. Wappalyzer - Technology profiler
While not a direct bug-catcher, Wappalyzer is an invaluable reconnaissance tool. It inspects the website you're on and tells you what technologies it's built with—the JavaScript framework, analytics tools, web server, CMS, and more.
How does this prevent bugs? Context is everything in debugging. If you're working on a legacy section of a large application, Wappalyzer can instantly remind you that it's running on an old version of jQuery, which might explain why your modern ES6 code is failing. It can help you identify if a performance issue is related to a specific third-party script or if a styling conflict is due to a competing CSS framework you weren't aware of.
Pro-Tip: Use Wappalyzer on your own production site. It can sometimes reveal outdated libraries or unexpected third-party scripts (perhaps added via a tag manager) that could be posing a security or performance risk.
11. CSS Peeper
Sometimes the hardest CSS bugs are the simplest: inconsistent colors, mismatched font sizes, or incorrect box shadows. CSS Peeper is a beautifully designed CSS inspector for people who love clean UIs. It lets you click on any element and see a well-organized breakdown of its styles, including all colors used on the page, typography details, and a list of all assets.
This tool is perfect for catching visual inconsistencies before they get committed. You can quickly scan the "Colors" palette to see if a slightly-off-brand hex code has snuck into your CSS. Or you can check the "Assets" panel to see if an image is uncompressed and massive, which would create a performance bug. It turns style guide compliance into a quick visual check.
Pro-Tip: Use the asset export feature. If you need to quickly grab an icon or image from a page to inspect it more closely or compare it with a design file, CSS Peeper lets you download it directly from its interface.
12. PerfectPixel by WellDoneCode
For the front-end developer tasked with creating a "pixel-perfect" implementation of a design mockup, PerfectPixel is a lifesaver. It allows you to overlay a semi-transparent image of your design mockup on top of your developed HTML page. You can then adjust the overlay's position and opacity to check for alignment, spacing, and size discrepancies down to the single pixel.
This extension directly targets visual bugs. It helps you answer questions like: Is this padding 16px or 20px? Is this heading perfectly aligned with the image next to it? Catching these tiny but noticeable visual flaws during development saves countless back-and-forth review cycles with designers and ensures a polished, professional final product.
Pro-Tip: Use multiple overlays for different responsive breakpoints. You can add the mobile, tablet, and desktop mockups as separate layers and toggle between them as you resize your browser window to ensure your implementation is pixel-perfect across all viewports.
13. WhatFont
A simple tool that does one thing perfectly. When you activate WhatFont, you can simply hover over any text on a webpage to instantly identify the font family, size, weight, line height, and color.
Typography is a cornerstone of design, and inconsistencies are bugs. This tool is the fastest way to spot when a heading is using the wrong font-weight or a paragraph's line height is off. It's an essential part of a front-end developer's pre-commit checklist for maintaining visual consistency and adhering to the established design system.
Pro-Tip: After hovering to identify a font, click on it. WhatFont will create a persistent tooltip with even more detail, allowing you to move your mouse away and compare that text's styling with other elements on the page.
14. Window Resizer
Testing for responsiveness is crucial, but constantly manually resizing your browser window is imprecise and tedious. Window Resizer solves this by letting you instantly resize your browser to a list of common (and customizable) screen resolutions.
This extension helps you systematically squash responsive design bugs. With a few clicks, you can emulate an iPhone, an iPad, and various standard desktop monitors. This process often reveals layout issues like overflowing content, broken navigation, or elements overlapping in ways you'd never see on your own wide-screen monitor. It forces you to check the breakpoints you might otherwise forget.
Pro-Tip: Customize the preset dimensions to match your project's specific breakpoints defined in your CSS. This creates a direct link between your code (@media (min-width: 768px)) and your testing environment.
15. EditThisCookie
Cookies are the gatekeepers of user sessions, A/B test variations, and personalization settings. EditThisCookie is a powerful cookie manager that lets you add, delete, edit, search for, and block cookies right from your browser.
This is an essential tool for debugging any feature that relies on user state. Is your "Welcome back, user!" message not showing? Check if the authentication cookie is being set correctly. Need to test the experience for a first-time visitor? Just delete all the site's cookies with one click. It gives you direct control over the state stored in the browser, allowing you to simulate countless user scenarios without complex setup.
Pro-Tip: Use the "Export" feature to copy your cookies to the clipboard in JSON format. This is incredibly useful for sharing a specific logged-in state with a teammate for collaborative debugging.
16. GoFullPage - Full Page Screen Capture
Sometimes a bug is visual and hard to describe. "The footer looks weird on long pages" is a vague bug report. GoFullPage allows you to take a clean, pixel-perfect screenshot of an entire web page, from the very top to the very bottom, with a single click.
This is the ultimate tool for visual regression testing and communication. Before you commit a big CSS refactor, take a "before" screenshot. After you're done, take an "after" shot. You can then easily compare them to ensure you haven't introduced any unintended visual changes. It's also perfect for attaching a clear, unambiguous image of a visual bug to a ticket or pull request.
Pro-Tip: Configure the image format in the options. While JPG is smaller, PNG will provide a lossless capture, which is better for detecting subtle color shifts or compression artifacts that might be considered visual bugs.
17. Clear Cache
The oldest trick in the IT support book is a developer's best friend. Clear Cache is a one-click button to clear your browser cache and other browsing data without having to navigate through Chrome's settings menus.
How many hours have been lost debugging an issue that was simply a stale version of a CSS or JavaScript file being served from the cache? This extension eliminates that possibility instantly. Before you pull your hair out over a CSS change that "isn't applying," a quick click on this button can save you 30 minutes of pointless debugging. It should be the first thing you do when something seems inexplicably broken.
Pro-Tip: Customize the extension to only clear the cache, leaving your cookies, history, and local storage intact. This gives you the benefit of getting fresh assets without logging you out of every site.
18. Grammarly for Chrome
This might seem like an odd choice for a developer's toolkit, but hear me out. The words we write are part of the user interface. A typo in a button label, an error message, or a product description is a bug. Grammarly acts as an automated proofreader for every text field in your browser.
Beyond the UI, think about your developer communication. A clear, well-written commit message is invaluable for future you (and your teammates). A detailed pull request description with no spelling errors communicates professionalism and care. Grammarly helps you catch those little mistakes in your UI copy, your comments, and your commit messages, improving the quality of your entire contribution.
Pro-Tip: Add custom words to your Grammarly dictionary for technical terms, brand names, or internal project codenames. This will train it to stop flagging correct-but-uncommon words as errors, making its suggestions even more relevant.
Your New Pre-Commit Ritual
There you have it—18 powerful allies in your quest for bug-free code. Integrating these Chrome extensions into your daily workflow creates a formidable "pre-commit" quality gate right in your browser. They empower you to catch accessibility failures, performance regressions, visual glitches, and state management errors long before they can cause trouble down the line.
Of course, tools are only part of the equation. They augment, but don't replace, the core tenets of good software development: writing clean code, thorough testing, and collaborative code reviews. But by building this powerful, proactive safety net, you can significantly reduce the number of bugs that make it to the review stage, saving time for you, your reviewers, and your QA team.
Now it's your turn. Which of these extensions are you most excited to try? Are there any indispensable tools we missed from this list? Share your favorite bug-catching Chrome extensions in the comments below
About the Author
Goh Ling Yong is a content creator and digital strategist sharing insights across various topics. Connect and follow for more content:
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