How to Customize Chrome's New Tab Page (2026 Guide)
June 18, 2026

How to Customize Chrome's New Tab Page (2026 Guide)

Open a new tab in Chrome and you get a search box, a row of shortcuts, and not much else. The moment you want more from that screen - your tasks, the weather, your calendar, a feed of what is happening - you run into the limits of what Chrome does on its own. This guide covers how to customize Chrome's new tab page two ways: with the built-in settings Chrome ships, and with an extension that replaces the page entirely so you can add real widgets.

#What You Can Change in Chrome's New Tab Page Natively

Chrome has a built-in panel for this. Open a new tab and click the Customize Chrome button (the pencil icon) in the bottom-right corner. A side panel opens on the right with everything Chrome lets you personalize.

#Change the Background and Theme

In the side panel, open Change theme to set a background. You can pick from Chrome's collections - Landscapes, Seascapes, Art, Cityscapes, and more - or choose Upload an image to use a photo from your computer, including an animated GIF. Turn on Refresh daily and Chrome rotates through a collection so the page looks fresh each morning.

Under Color and theme you get 15 preset shades, or you can pick a custom color with the eye-dropper or by typing an RGB value. The color applies to the toolbar and the new tab together, so the whole browser matches.

#Add or Hide Shortcuts

Shortcuts are the icons under the search box. Open Shortcuts in the panel and choose My shortcuts to curate your own set, or Most visited sites to let Chrome fill them automatically from your history. Prefer a cleaner page? Turn off the Show shortcuts toggle and they disappear entirely. Chrome caps custom shortcuts at 10, which is the first wall many people hit.

#Turn Cards On or Off

Cards are the small content tiles Chrome surfaces below the shortcuts - recipe ideas, shopping cart reminders, quick links to recent Google Drive files, and similar. Open Cards in the panel to pick which ones show, or switch off Show cards to remove them completely. For a lot of people, hiding cards is the single biggest cleanup.

That is the full extent of Chrome's native personalization: a background, a color, up to 10 shortcuts, and a few optional cards.

#How to Set a Custom Homepage in Chrome (It Is Not the New Tab Page)

People often search for how to set a custom homepage in Chrome when what they actually want is a custom new tab page. Chrome treats three things separately, and it helps to know which one you are changing.

  • New tab page - what appears every time you open a tab. You personalize it with the Customize Chrome panel above, but Chrome will not let you point it at an arbitrary web address from Settings.
  • Homepage - the page that loads when you click the Home button. Go to Settings → Appearance, turn on Show home button, and enter any custom web address.
  • Startup pages - what opens when Chrome launches. Go to Settings → On startup, choose Open a specific page or set of pages, and add the URLs you want.

So you can absolutely set a custom homepage and custom startup pages to any site through Settings. The new tab page is the one screen Chrome keeps for itself, and pointing it at something else is exactly what an extension does.

#Where Chrome's Built-In Options Hit a Ceiling

Chrome's native customization is fine for a tidier, better-looking page. It runs out of room fast once you want the new tab to be useful:

  • No widgets. There is no native way to add weather, tasks, notes, a calendar, or an RSS feed to the new tab.
  • A fixed layout. You get a background, shortcuts, and cards in that arrangement. You cannot move blocks around or build your own grid.
  • The search box stays put. The Google search box and branding are fixed and cannot be removed or replaced.
  • One page for everything. You cannot keep a separate setup for work and another for personal use - there is only the single default page.

If all you want is a nicer background and a clean row of links, the native settings are enough and you can stop here. If you want the new tab to do real work, you need an extension.

#How to Replace Chrome's New Tab Page With an Extension

Replacing the new tab page is straightforward, and Chrome has a dedicated permission for it.

  1. Open the Chrome Web Store and search for a new tab extension. Searching for a "new tab dashboard" or a specific tool by name both work.
  2. Click Add to Chrome, then Add extension in the confirmation dialog. Chrome will tell you the extension can "Change your new tab page" - that permission is precisely what lets it take over the screen.
  3. Open a new tab. The extension's page now appears instead of Chrome's default.
  4. Customize from there using the extension's own settings.

To switch back or change which extension owns the new tab, go to chrome://extensions and disable or remove the one you do not want. If you install more than one new-tab extension, the most recently enabled one usually wins, so disable the others to avoid a tug-of-war over the page.

Not sure which to install? Our tested roundup of the best new tab extensions compares the main options honestly, including the free and open-source ones.

#How to Add Widgets to Chrome

Adding widgets to Chrome is the whole reason to go the extension route, since Chrome has no native widget system. Once a widget-based extension owns the new tab, you add widgets from a picker and arrange them on a grid, the same way you would lay out a phone home screen.

The widgets people reach for first on a Chrome new tab are usually:

With Start Page HQ you get 50+ widgets on top of those, including Links for shortcuts that beat Chrome's 10-icon cap, Kanban tasks, notes, world clocks, currency conversion, and developer tools. Because it ships native extensions for Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Edge plus a hosted web app, the dashboard you build syncs across every device and browser you sign into, which the native page cannot do.

#Recommended Setups

There is no single right layout - the point of a customizable page is to match how you work. A few setups that hold up well:

  • Minimal and focused. A clean background, a clock, and one row of links. Most of the calm you get from Chrome's native page, minus the cards.
  • Productivity dashboard. Links, a todo list, your calendar, and the weather on one page, so the day's shape is visible the second a tab opens. If that is your goal, our Momentum alternative breakdown shows how a widget grid compares to a focus-first page.
  • News and reading. RSS feeds and a news summary so you skim headlines without opening five sites.
  • Developer command center. Repo and dashboard links, a Pomodoro timer, and a JSON formatter within reach. See the developers page for a full example.

The strongest version of this keeps each setup on its own page and switches between them with a click, instead of cramming everything onto one screen.

#Try It on Your Own New Tab

Chrome's native settings will get you a nicer background and a clean set of shortcuts. To turn the new tab into a real new tab dashboard with widgets, multiple pages, and sync across browsers, the extension route is the only way there.

The fastest way to see how it feels is the live demo - it is pre-loaded with pages and widgets you can poke at without signing up.

Try the live demo