I got tired of cluttered New Tab pages, so I built my own.

Ziad shalaby — Sat, 05 Sep 2026 01:43:01 +0000

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 stuff getting in the way.

I looked around for existing extensions, but most of them seemed to follow the same idea:

more features → more widgets → more visual clutter.

So eventually I thought:

"Maybe I should just build the New Tab I actually want."

And that's what I did.

I built ZS New Tab, a minimal, fast, offline-first New Tab replacement focused mainly on getting to your websites quickly.

I also intentionally kept the implementation simple.

It's built with plain HTML, CSS, and JavaScript — no framework and no build step.

The goal isn't to make the most feature-packed New Tab.

It's to make one that stays out of your way.

It's open source and currently available to install manually through Chrome's developer mode.

DEV Community: Ziad shalaby