What to Put on Your Chrome New Tab Page

Chrome gives you a new tab page.

Most advice tells you how to decorate it.

That is the smaller question.

The better question is:

What should appear at the exact moment before you choose what to do next?

A new tab is not really a page. It is a pause between actions. You open one before searching, before checking something, before avoiding something, before returning to something you meant to read.

So the right Chrome new tab page is not the prettiest one. It is the one that gives that pause a job.

What Chrome already gives you

Chrome’s built-in new tab page is more capable than it looks.

Google’s help page says you can choose shortcuts or most-visited sites, change the background and browser color, manage dark mode, turn cards on or off, resume browsing from history, continue with tabs from other devices, and show or hide the footer that indicates which extension controls the page.¹

That is the native surface:

• search box
• shortcuts or most-visited sites
• background and theme
• personalized cards
• resume-browsing cards
• tabs from other devices
• extension footer

If that is enough, stop there. You do not need an extension just to feel organized.

But native Chrome mostly answers:

What should this page look like?

It does not fully answer:

What should this page make easier?

That is where the choice starts.

It also explains why people get unusually annoyed when the new tab changes. A clean new tab page feels private in a way a normal website does not. You are not visiting it. You are passing through it all day.

How protective people are of this surface shows up when it breaks. In May 2026, a Chrome 148 bug forced the bookmarks bar to appear on the new tab page even for users who kept it hidden — it disappeared as soon as you opened a normal site but stuck on every fresh tab. Affected users reported it on Reddit and Google’s support pages.² A small, forced change to a page you mostly pass through was enough to send people looking for workarounds.

Option 1: blank

A blank new tab page is underrated.

Use it if your real problem is distraction.

The job of a blank page is to add nothing. No weather. No quote. No feed. No project dashboard. No inspirational wallpaper that becomes one more thing to fiddle with.

This is the right choice if you mostly open a new tab to search, paste a URL, or get somewhere fast. It is also the right choice if every extra widget becomes a small delay.

You can get close with Chrome’s native controls by hiding shortcuts and cards. If you want a true blank page, Chrome Web Store tools such as New Tab Redirect and Custom New Tab exist mostly to point new tabs at a custom URL, local file, or about:blank.³⁴

Chrome extensions can also replace the new tab page directly. Chrome’s developer docs call this an override page and say new tab overrides should be quick and small because users expect built-in browser pages to open instantly.⁵

The point is not minimalism as a taste.

The point is fewer chances to drift.

Option 2: launcher

A launcher new tab is for people who open the same places all day.

Calendar. Docs. Linear. Notion. Gmail. GitHub. A local dev URL. Your customer dashboard.

This is the most practical version of a custom new tab page. It should be boring. A few links, maybe a search field, maybe recent work. The job is speed, not ambiance.

Chrome’s built-in shortcuts already cover this for many people. If you need more than that, use a launcher extension or a custom URL.

The test is simple:

Did this page get me to work faster, or did it become another thing to manage?

If you spend more time arranging the launcher than using it, it failed.

Option 3: dashboard

A dashboard new tab is useful only when the status is actually useful at the moment you open a tab.

Tasks due today can be useful.

The next calendar event can be useful.

Open tabs from another device can be useful.

A giant wall of widgets is usually not useful.

Google’s own new tab cards point in the sensible direction: resume browsing, related history, and recent tabs from other devices.¹ Those are not decorative. They help you continue a real browsing thread.

That is the standard for a dashboard. It should either resume work or remove uncertainty. If it mostly shows information you did not ask for, it is just a feed wearing a productivity costume.

The market pulls the other way. Replacement extensions compete on widget count: one popular pack advertises 60-plus widgets — calendar, mail, weather, notes, RSS feeds, music — and pitches itself as an all-in-one dashboard.⁶ The implicit pitch is that more on the page is more useful. The test above is the opposite: a widget earns its place only if you would have looked it up at the moment the tab opened.

Option 4: reading queue

This is the branch most new tab advice misses.

Sometimes the thing you need next is not a destination. It is something you already saved.

Articles. Research links. X threads. Bookmarks from yesterday. A post you saved because it was too long for the moment you found it.

The hard part of read-later tools is not saving. Saving is easy. The hard part is return.

That is why Chrome Reading List feels weaker than it should. It exists, and it is useful, but it lives in a side panel you have to remember to open.

Bookmarks have the same problem. A bookmark manager can be excellent and still fail if you never go back to it. That is the deeper point behind the Chrome bookmark manager and Pocket alternatives posts: the manager matters less than the return path.

The return problem is live, not hypothetical. Mozilla shut Pocket down on July 8, 2025, then closed the export window on November 12, 2025 and queued the saved data for deletion.⁷ The most-cited read-later app closing left a large group of people picking a new home for things they meant to read. Most will pick another manager. Few will fix the part that actually broke: getting saved things back in front of them.

A reading-queue new tab works when saved things are the thing you most often fail to revisit.

It should not show everything you saved forever. That turns into clutter. It should show a small, scannable queue of things that deserve another look.

For normal web pages, that may be a read-later app or a bookmark tool.

For X / Twitter bookmarks, that is the narrow case Totem is built for.

Where Totem fits

Totem is not a general Chrome new tab dashboard.

It does not replace your calendar. It does not organize every bookmark. It does not turn your browser into a second brain.

It does one thing: it puts saved X / Twitter bookmarks on your Chrome new tab page, locally, so they reappear before you reopen the feed.

If you are still choosing between X bookmark tools, start with the broader Twitter bookmark manager comparison. This page is only about whether the new tab is the right surface.

That only makes sense if a meaningful share of what you save lives on X. If your saved pile is mostly articles, use a read-later app. If it is mostly work links, use a launcher. If it is mostly distraction, use a blank page.

But if your failure mode is:

I save X posts because I want to read them later, then I never see them again.

Then the new tab page is a good place for them to come back.

That is the whole bet.

What not to put there

Do not put a feed on your new tab unless you are comfortable turning every new tab into a feed decision.

That includes news feeds, social feeds, algorithmic discovery, and “inspiration” surfaces that are really just another scroll.

Do not put a huge task system there unless opening a new tab is actually when you decide what task to do next.

Do not put a dashboard there because dashboards feel serious.

The new tab page is too frequent a surface for vague ambition. Anything that appears there should earn the interruption.

The simple test

Look at your last ten new tabs.

What were they for?

• If they were mostly searches, use a blank or nearly blank page.
• If they were mostly repeated destinations, use a launcher.
• If they were mostly unfinished work, use a resume/dashboard surface.
• If they were mostly avoidance, remove everything.
• If they were mostly “I should read that later,” use a reading queue.

That is the real answer to “what should I put on my Chrome new tab page?”

Not the prettiest wallpaper.

Not the busiest dashboard.

The thing that helps the next tab do its job.