How to customize the Chrome new tab page
Chrome gives you a background, ten shortcuts and a few cards. Everything past that needs an extension.
Chrome keeps its new tab settings behind the pencil icon at the bottom right of the page. It opens a Customize Chrome panel covering three things: the background, your shortcuts, and cards. Nothing else on that page moves or changes without an extension.
What Chrome lets you change
Open a new tab and click the pencil. The panel slides in from the right, and everything Chrome offers is in it.
- Background. Pick from collections like Landscapes, Art or Cityscapes, or upload your own image. An animated GIF works.
- Colour and theme. Fifteen preset shades, plus a custom picker. The colour applies to the toolbar and the page together, so this is really a browser theme.
- Shortcuts. Choose "My shortcuts" to curate your own, or "Most visited sites" to let Chrome fill them from your history. Custom shortcuts cap at ten.
- Cards. Pick which ones appear, or switch "Show cards" off to clear them completely.
Where Chrome’s options stop
The layout is fixed. You cannot move the search box, resize anything, or put your own content on the page.
You also cannot add anything that is not a shortcut. No notes, no weather, no timer, no calendar. Chrome offers cards, and the set of cards is chosen by Google, not by you.
That boundary is why new tab extensions exist. An extension replaces the page outright, which means it can draw whatever it likes.
What to check before installing one
A new tab override sees a page you open dozens of times a day. The category has a long history of adware, so it is worth five minutes of checking.
- Read the permissions on the store listing. "Read and change all your data on all websites" is far more than a new tab page needs.
- Check the size. Many ship megabytes of stock photography and video, which you then load on every tab.
- Look for an account. If it wants a sign-up, your board lives on someone else’s server, and so does whatever you write into it.
- Try it offline. A page that needs the network to draw is a page that stalls when the network is slow.
- Check the privacy policy for what is collected. "Anonymous usage data" from a page tied to your browsing is worth reading twice.
| You want to | Chrome alone | An extension |
|---|---|---|
| Change the background | Yes | Yes |
| Curate shortcuts | Yes, up to ten | Usually unlimited |
| Hide Google’s cards | Yes | Not applicable |
| Move or resize anything | No | Yes |
| Add notes, weather, timers | No | Yes |
| Keep the page working offline | Yes | Depends on the extension |
How dashi does it
Seventeen widgets you drag where you want them. Tiles snap to their neighbours as you drag, and one Tidy up command straightens the whole board without resizing anything.
Every display remembers its own arrangement, so plugging a laptop into a monitor does not scramble the layout you made on either. Themes change the materials, not just the colour.
There is no account and no server. Weather and crypto prices come from public endpoints that need no key. Everything you write stays in your browser and roams through Chrome sync if you use it.