I got tired of cluttered New Tab pages, so I built my own.
For a while, I kept feeling that my browser's New Tab page was doing too much — but somehow still wasn't doing the one thing I actually wanted. I don't need news, weather, quotes, to-do lists, or a dashboard full of widgets every time I open a new tab. Most of the time, I just want my websites . The sites I visit every day, organized exactly how I want them, easy to access, without a bunch of…
My browser's New Tab page was feeling cluttered and overburdened. Despite having news, weather, quotes, to-do lists, and a dashboard full of widgets, it still wasn't delivering the one thing I truly desired - my frequently visited websites, neatly organized according to my preference, easily accessible without any unnecessary distractions.
I scoured the internet for existing extensions, but found them all plagued by similar issues: more features equated to more widgets, leading to visual clutter. This realization sparked an idea - why not create the New Tab experience I've always wanted? And so, I did. I built ZS New Tab, a minimalist, speedy, offline-first alternative that prioritizes swift access to your websites.
Its core features include a customizable bookmark grid with drag & drop capability, custom background images, auto-fetching of favicons along with support for custom icon uploads, search options powered by Google, DuckDuckGo, Brave, and Bing, customizable rows and columns, multiple pages navigable via mouse-wheel or arrow keys, keyboard shortcuts, a clean dark UI.
Importantly, it doesn't require any account, nor does it engage in tracking or maintain a backend. Everything functions locally within your browser. The implementation was kept deliberately simple - it's built on plain HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, without any framework or build process. The aim wasn't to craft the most feature-rich New Tab, but rather one that remains inconspicuous.
ZS New Tab is open source and available for manual installation through Chrome's developer mode. You can find it on GitHub: https://github.com/ziadshalaby00/ZS-New-Tab.
Written by urgent.news from Dev.to's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
