How to Make Your Chrome New Tab Beautiful and Useful

You open a new tab dozens of times a day. For most people it is a search box and a grid of sites they already know how to reach. That is a lot of attention spent on a page that does nothing for you.

A custom new tab page fixes that. Here is what is worth putting on it, and how to set it up without making it heavy.

1. Start with a wallpaper you like

The background does more than you would expect. A calm, high-quality image makes the tab something you want to open, and a rotating collection keeps it from going stale.

What to look for:

• Collections you can switch. One for work, one for evenings.
• Auto-rotation you control. Every hour, every day, or never.
• Your own images. Upload a photo you love and it is in the rotation.
• Favorites. Star one mid-rotation so it does not cycle away for good.

2. Add a focus timer where you start work

The best place for a focus timer is the page you already open when you sit down. One click starts a session, and everything else on the page fades away until it is done.

Pair it with a short to-do list on the same page. Checking off three small things before lunch is the easiest way to build momentum.

3. Put your shortcuts where your eyes land

Chrome's default shortcuts are whatever you visited most. A better layout is the handful of sites you decide to keep: your mail, your documents, your calendar. Pin them once and they are one click away on every tab.

4. Move things until it feels right

Two people never want the same layout. Look for a new tab that lets you drag the widgets around, hide what you do not need, and bring everything back with one click if you hide too much.

In The Side Quest you can press and hold any widget to rearrange it, like a phone home screen, and the toolbar icon has a "Show all controls" button if you ever lose something.

5. Add a reason to come back

This is the part most new-tab extensions skip. Habits stick when there is a small reward. In The Side Quest you pick a companion (Fire, Water or Grass), give it a name, and it earns XP from finished tasks, focus sessions and games. It levels up from 1 to 20 and evolves through five forms.

It is a small thing, and it turns a to-do list from a chore into something you want to check.

6. Keep a break close, not far

The same page can hold a few quick games for the five-minute gaps between tasks. The Side Quest includes a fighting game, Bingo, online chess, snake, falling blocks and a space shooter. You can send a friend a link to play against them in their own browser, with no install.

Keep it private and fast

A new tab extension sees every tab you open, so it is worth checking what it does with that:

• It should run no ads and no tracking.
• It should need no account for the basics.
• It should open instantly, because it replaces the page directly instead of running in the background.

The Side Quest keeps your tasks, settings and favorites in your browser, and you can read exactly what it shares and when in its privacy policy.

Set it up in two minutes

1. Install it from the Chrome Web Store.
2. Open a new tab and pick your companion.
3. Choose a wallpaper collection in Settings.
4. Add your shortcuts and arrange the widgets.
5. Start your first focus session.

If it is not for you, turn it off at chrome://extensions and Chrome returns to its default page straight away.