A minimal, highly customizable new tab page for Chrome. Live clock, weather, multi-engine search with suggestions, quick links, and an interactive pixel grid — all in vanilla HTML/CSS/JS with no dependencies.
- Live clock updating every second (HH:MM:SS)
- Time-aware greeting: Good morning / afternoon / evening / night
- Personalized with your name (optional)
- Full date display (day, month, date)
- Powered by OpenWeatherMap (free tier works)
- Shows temperature, feels-like, humidity, weather description, and icon
- Auto-detect location via geolocation, or specify any city by name
- Metric (°C) or Imperial (°F) units
- Toggle location label visibility
- Engines: Google, DuckDuckGo, Kagi, Brave, Bing
- Live autocomplete suggestions (debounced 200ms)
- Click the engine badge to switch engines inline — persists across tabs
- Keyboard navigation through suggestions (↑ / ↓ / Enter / Escape)
- Press
/anywhere on the page to jump to the search bar
- Up to 9 links with custom labels and URLs
- Favicons auto-fetched via DuckDuckGo
- Press
1–9to navigate directly from keyboard - Reorder or delete links in settings
- Interactive grid next to the clock running Conway's Game of Life
- Hover to paint cells with a shifting rainbow hue trail
- Click to trigger an expanding colorful ripple + seed a burst of live cells into the simulation
- Respects
prefers-reduced-motion - Pauses when the tab is not visible
- Light / Dark / System theme with one-click cycling
- 9 accent color presets + custom hex input
- Custom font: any locally installed font by name
- Background image: URL or local file upload, with brightness and blur controls
- Pixel grid show/hide toggle
Clone or download this repository, then use make to build and install.
make install-chromeThis builds lifetab-1.0.0-chrome.zip and opens chrome://extensions. Then:
- Enable Developer mode (top right toggle)
- Click Load unpacked and select this folder
(or drag-drop the zip onto the page) - Open a new tab
Run temporarily (dev mode):
make run-firefox # requires: npm install -g web-extBuild .zip for permanent install:
make pack-firefoxThen in Firefox: about:addons → gear icon → Install Add-on From File → select the built zip.
Firefox temp-load (without signing):
about:debugging→ This Firefox → Load Temporary Add-on → select any file in this folder.
| Command | Description |
|---|---|
make pack-chrome |
Build lifetab-*-chrome.zip |
make pack-firefox |
Build lifetab-*-firefox.zip (swaps in Firefox manifest) |
make install-chrome |
Pack + open Chrome extensions page |
make run-firefox |
Launch Firefox with extension via web-ext |
make clean |
Remove built zips |
Click the settings icon (bottom-left) or open the panel via the gear button.
| Section | Options |
|---|---|
| General | Name, custom font |
| Appearance | Accent color, pixel grid, background image (URL or file), brightness, blur |
| Weather | API key, location (city name or auto), units, show/hide location label |
| Search | Default search engine |
| Quick Links | Add, edit, reorder, delete links |
Settings sync across devices via chrome.storage.sync. Background images are stored locally via chrome.storage.local.
- Sign up at openweathermap.org (free)
- Copy your API key
- Open Settings → Weather → paste the key
- Set location to a city name (e.g.
London) orautofor geolocation
| Key | Action |
|---|---|
/ |
Focus search bar |
1 – 9 |
Open quick link by index |
↑ / ↓ |
Navigate search suggestions |
Enter |
Submit search |
Escape |
Close suggestions / dropdown / settings |
| Permission | Reason |
|---|---|
storage |
Save settings and background image |
api.openweathermap.org |
Fetch weather data |
icons.duckduckgo.com |
Fetch favicons for quick links and search engines |
suggestqueries.google.com |
Google search suggestions |
duckduckgo.com |
DuckDuckGo search suggestions |
- Manifest V3
- Vanilla HTML / CSS / JavaScript — zero dependencies, zero build step
chrome.storage.syncfor config,chrome.storage.localfor images- Fonts: Inter + JetBrains Mono via Google Fonts
MIT