cust*m Tab — Your tab. Your rules.
Website · Privacy · Technical docs · Contributing
cust*m Tab replaces the new tab page with either a dashboard you configure or a URL of your own. It has no account, no telemetry, and no server behind it.
Runs in Chrome 121+ and Firefox 142+ from one source tree. Vanilla HTML, CSS and JavaScript, no runtime dependencies, and no build step needed to run it.
Bookmarks you edit in place. Add, rename, delete and drag to reorder tiles directly on the tab. Changes persist immediately.
26 search engines, privacy-forward first. DuckDuckGo and Brave lead the
list. Each engine carries an honest badge saying whether that provider builds a
profile of you. Type ct in the address bar to search without opening a tab;
ct brave cats forces a specific engine for one query.
Backgrounds you choose. Six gradient palettes, any solid colour via a picker, a photo from Pexels, or your own picture from disk. Pick a flat colour and the interface derives its own text contrast from that colour's WCAG luminance, so a pale background gets dark text rather than being disallowed.
An interface you shape. Glass, frosted or solid material. A clock you can resize, reweight, restyle or switch off. A greeting that says the time of day with your name, your own headline instead, or nothing. Turn all of it off and the tab is a search bar over a background — which is a legitimate answer, so it is one you can pick.
Photo backgrounds on your own key. Set a search term and get a new photo every day, every hour, or on every tab. The photographer is always credited. See docs/PEXELS.md.
A sunrise reveal. The background rises and blooms as the tab opens, animated
on the compositor so it never delays first paint. Skipped automatically under
prefers-reduced-motion.
Or skip the dashboard. Point the new tab at any URL, including a local file or another extension page.
Opt-in sync. Mirror preferences across devices if you want to. Bookmarks and your API key never leave the device.
The extension collects nothing. Four things can leave your browser, each only because you asked:
| When | What is sent | To |
|---|---|---|
| You press Enter in the search bar | Your query | The engine you selected |
| You enable photo backgrounds | Your search term and your own API key | api.pexels.com |
| You switch the icon source to remote | Each bookmark's hostname | icons.duckduckgo.com |
| You switch the icon source to sites | A request for /favicon.ico |
Each bookmarked site |
By default, bookmark icons resolve from the browser's own on-device cache, with locally drawn letter tiles as the fallback.
Versions before 1.2.0 requested every bookmark icon from Google on every new tab, which contradicted the privacy promise in this README. That is fixed; see the changelog.
Full policy: https://philppplik.github.io/custm-tab/privacy.html
Store listings are pending. Until then, take the packages from the latest release:
Chrome, Edge, Brave - unzip custm-tab-chrome-*.zip, open
chrome://extensions, enable Developer mode, choose Load unpacked, select the
folder.
Firefox - unzip custm-tab-firefox-*.zip, open
about:debugging#/runtime/this-firefox, choose Load Temporary Add-on, select
manifest.json.
A four-step wizard opens on first run.
git clone https://github.com/philppplik/custm-tab.git
cd custm-tab
npm install
npm run verify| Command | What it does |
|---|---|
npm run verify |
Everything CI runs: format, lint, manifest validation, tests |
npm test |
Unit and integration tests |
npm run test:coverage |
Tests plus coverage thresholds |
npm run build |
Per-browser packages into dist/ |
npm run lint:ext |
web-ext lint against the Firefox package |
npm run screenshots |
Serve the preview harness to regenerate store assets |
npm run generate:icons |
Re-vendor the search engine brand glyphs (needs network) |
extension/ loads unpacked in both browsers as-is. The Node tooling lints,
tests and packages; it never compiles the source.
See CONTRIBUTING.md for the full workflow and extension/TECHNICAL.md for the architecture.
extension/ the add-on itself (this is what ships)
docs/ GitHub Pages site, privacy policy, Pexels and store guides
screenshots/ store assets, generated from the real UI
scripts/ manifest validator and per-browser packaging
tests/ Vitest suites with an in-memory chrome.* mock
tools/preview/ harness that renders the real UI for screenshots
Report vulnerabilities privately through GitHub Security Advisories, not a public issue. See SECURITY.md.
CodeQL, Dependabot, dependency review, and secret scanning with push protection all run on this repository.
MIT. See LICENSE.