I open 50+ tabs a day, and Chrome’s default page feels increasingly cluttered with trending searches, suggested junk, and noisy search results. Most third-party startpages swing to the other extreme: bloated widgets (weather, stocks, notes) that slow down load times.
I’m prototyping a local-first, minimal New Tab extension focused on three things:
1. Clean Search: A fast search bar that defaults to clean, text-only Google results (⁠&udm=14⁠), bypassing AI overviews and ad carousels.
2. Visual Bookmarks: Automatically reads your native Chrome bookmarks into clean visual cards—no manual importing or link accounts.
3. RSS Reading Radar: A minimal 3–5 headline stream from your favorite blogs/Substacks directly below, with zero algorithmic feed noise.
The rule: Local-first, loads in <15\text{ ms}, zero tracking, zero setup fatigue.
Feedback wanted:
What does your current New Tab look like (default, blank, or an extension)?
Is a live RSS radar on your startpage useful, or would you prefer just search + bookmarks?
Roast the idea—brutal honesty appreciated.

This is not a startpage, so tell me if it is off topic here - but it came from the same itch.

I had my new tab set up exactly how I wanted, and then every actual site I opened was flat white again. So I made an extension that carries the look past the new tab. It puts your wallpaper behind ordinary pages too, and turns the panels, buttons and boxes translucent and blurred over it so the text still reads.

It only steps in when a page is plain white, grey or black. Anything that already has its own design is left alone, and there is a per-site off switch for the ones you want untouched.

Firefox is the thing I get asked for most and I am working on it.

https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/wallpaperify-custom-page/dbdlklbhgonimapnjkkfnloheapaaoia

Free, everything stays on your machine.

Being upfront: I earn nothing from this. It started as a personal project and I honestly do not know yet how much people actually want it. If it is useful to you, a comment or any feedback genuinely helps me work out whether to keep putting time into it. If you try it, I would also love to know what settings you land on, so I can turn the combinations people settle on into one-click presets.

Hey all,

Personal project, back after a full rewrite of the layout system. The reason I built it in the first place: I wanted a new tab that behaves like a tool. Start from the keyboard, hit a shortcut in two keys, done. And I wanted the whole thing inspectable — no framework, no build step, no lock-in. Plain HTML/CSS/JS, 39 ES modules, ~790 KB of core (~1.6 MB with icons and fonts). Runs as a static site, a PWA, or a Chrome MV3 extension that overrides the new tab.

What changed in this build (1.0.0-rc-1):

- Edit mode: drag, resize and reorder the category boxes; the grid persists per profile.

- 8 locales (es/en/de/fr/it/pt/nl/ja) with a parity test so no key can go missing.

- AI drawer: works with a local heuristic (no keys), or Ollama / LM Studio / OpenAI / Anthropic if you want. Keys live for the tab session only, nothing else.

- Everything (shortcuts, layout, notes, theme) is in localStorage. JSON export/import, and optionally AES-256-GCM encrypted sync to your own Gist.

- 169 tests that run in the browser with zero dependencies. Open tests/index.html.

What it does not do: no telemetry, no analytics, no remote code, no third-party scripts. The only network calls are the ones you start: weather, RSS feeds, AI, backup.

Live: https://devildonia.github.io/hades_shortcuts/ Source: https://github.com/Devildonia/hades_shortcuts

Three things I'd genuinely like opinions on:

1. Search ranking is local token overlap, not embeddings. If you keep 100+ shortcuts, is that enough or does it start to feel weak?

2. The iCal parser is hand-rolled (RFC 5545 subset). If it breaks on an Outlook or iCloud edge case, a sample .ics would be worth a lot.

3. localStorage + manual JSON export as persistence — for a daily driver startpage, is that a real limitation or am I overthinking it?