Science
He lives outside of Philadelphia, PA, with his wife and three kids. When he’s not writing, Brandon plays drums and enjoys listening to music.
He’s a graduate of the Villanova School of Business where he got a bachelors degree in finance.
After spending the time to customize my new tab page, I’m enjoying a cleaner and faster Chrome experience on my Android that makes it smoother and easier to get to the websites I visit often.
You can take control of this page yourself. I’m going to walk you through how to customize your new tab page and offer some ideas on how to make it look as clean as possible.
What’s actually new in Chrome
New tab customization has been on desktop for years, and now it’s on mobile
For years now, you’ve been able to customize the New Tab page on Chrome on PC by clicking the pencil icon in the bottom right corner of the New Tab page, which goes on to let you change the entire look and feel with custom colors and themes, toggles for shortcuts, and even upload your own wallpaper.
This same functionality has come to Chrome on Android (which has other features you probbaly aren’t using), and it can really clean up this important part of Chrome. From removing content recommendations to deleting the row of your favorite shortcuts if you want, this customization tool lets you totally transform the look and feel of the New Tab page on Chrome.
To get started, tap the three dots in Chrome> Customize new tab page.
First, we want to change the wallpaper.
Setting a custom wallpaper
Use your own, or pick from Chrome Themes
From the Customize new tab page, go to Appearance, where you can pick a custom background, either by uploading your own image, by picking pre-made wallpaper in Theme collections (where you can also toggle on the “refresh daily” option to change the wallpaper each day), or you can pick Chrome colors, which lets you pick from nine different color options that give you a minimal, tinted look, and this can also be rotated daily should you choose that option.
What wallpapers look best on this page?
Pick a two-tone wallpaper
I find the best wallpaper for this page, like the one shown above with the blue Red Bull racing image, is divided into a top third portion that is another color to highlight the Google search field and the accompanying two buttons below for AI and Incognito mode (which you cannot move or change). This gives the new tab page an interesting two-tone look that looks clean.
Next we’ll talk about some options you have to reduce the visual noise.
The real clutter reducer
Disable content suggestions and remove shortcuts
There’s a lot you can toggle on and off within the customizer. If you go to My Shortcuts, you can turn on and off the row of shortcuts Chrome puts together based on which websites you visit most often. I like keeping this on since I visit the same half-dozen or so websites frequently, and this “quick-dial” pane is handy.
Another thing you can disable if you want that will give the new tab page a cleaner look is the Discover feed. To do that, just go to the Discover feed option in the new tab customization panel, and turn it off. I generally like the suggestions of Google Discover, as they are catered to my interests.
There’s another whole panel under New tab page cards that has less to do with the visual design of the new tab page and is more related to new tab behavior. That includes Continue with this tab (which will point you back to a tab you have been looking at for a while if you navigate away from it), Price drops on tabs (I’ve never seen this one work, but it’s supposed to alert you of price reduction on items you were browsing with one of Google’s shopping experiences), Safety check (this will prompt you to change a compromised password or revoke unused site permissions), and Chrome Tips (this alerts you to new Chrome features after you install a new version of Android or Chrome). I left all of these turned on as they seem to be helpful features.
Set up your Chrome homepage however you want
Adjust the information density to suit you
I’m still experimenting with different looks for my new tab page, but one thing I’ve settled on is having a relaxing or two-tone background along with the Discover feed but no personal shortcuts. This is because Chrome is so good at predicting the websites I want to go to that I usually need to only type the first letter of the website I want to go to, like “M” for MakeUseOf, and in one more tap I’m there, and I don’t particularly like the design of the website shortcuts bar. But there’s a universe of other tweaks you can make to Chrome should you want to dig in more, like these more advanced Chrome tips, or if you want another option, we really like Brave.
How would you customize your new tab page in Chrome?
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