v3.1.0 — PULSAR: Nova in your language

Nova 3.1: Nova in your language

A minor release with no new permissions and no new dependencies. It deepens what Nova 3 already promised: smart add in every language, a printable day, and a round of fixes found by running the real extension in Chrome.

New

• Smart add in all 18 languages: dates ("tomorrow", "in 3 days", weekdays), priorities and repeats are understood in every interface language, and the ! and @ shortcut words (priority and due date) work in all of them. It runs entirely on your device, no AI needed
• Print your day: Ctrl+P, or "Print today's page" in the command palette (Ctrl+K), prints a clean black-and-white sheet with the date, the daily focus, your tasks (overdue, due today and undated), habits and today's calendar events, with no backgrounds or buttons. It fits A4 and Letter, left-to-right and right-to-left. In guest mode, or while Nova is locked, nothing personal is printed, and the sheet is removed from the page after printing
• A background for each profile: every saved profile remembers the background image you uploaded and brings it back when you switch to it. If the copy is missing, Nova falls back to the automatic background
• What's new for 3.1, in all 18 languages, shown once after upgrading from 3.0.x

Fixes

• Calendar card ("upcoming"): it could stay empty. chrome.storage turns dates into {}, so after the cache was saved the event dates were invalid and the card threw an error (the events also disappeared from the weekly planner and today's briefing in the hub). The cache now stores timestamps and checks them when it is read; a damaged cache, including one written by 3.0.x, counts as a miss and is reloaded from the calendar
• Tasks in a narrow card: titles are no longer squeezed into a thin column. Action buttons appear on hover or focus, date, repeat and Pomodoro chips move to the second line, and titles wrap at word boundaries. An active reminder and subtask progress stay visible without hovering
• Crypto and stocks: when loading fails or there is no data, the cards say so instead of staying empty
• Damaged data: broken records (tasks, habits, links, notes, world clocks, mood entries, custom quotes) are cleaned on load, on backup import and on section import, with a single console.warn saying how many were dropped or repaired. Long URLs (OAuth, maps) are no longer truncated
• Deleting from an old tab: deleting a row that another tab already deleted no longer throws an error or offers an "Undo" that cannot work (tasks, habits, links, notes and the kanban board)
• Daily quote: quotation marks follow the language (« » in French, „ " in German, 「 」 in Japanese, and so on)
• Accessibility: accessible names for the Pomodoro task picker and the timer minutes, AA contrast for the Patreon and Ko-fi buttons, and a wider axe check. The text on the automatic backgrounds now meets WCAG AA contrast: with the dimming layer counted, white text on the midday "day" background failed on most of the screen, and the "morning", "dawn", "cloudy" and "snow" backgrounds failed on large parts of it

Tests

344 unit tests, 162 end-to-end tests, and 12 tests that load the built extension in real Chromium (storage round trip, restoring alarms in the service worker, editing in three tabs, damaged data, per-profile backgrounds, the calendar). Each new test was checked to fail on the old code.

Known and not fixed

• The smart-add phrases for the 16 languages other than English and Hebrew were written without review by native speakers, so some inflected forms or common phrases may not be recognized, and rarely one may be misread (for example Chinese "很重要" leaves "很" in the task text). Reports are welcome
• Editing the same item in two tabs at exactly the same moment is still resolved as "the last writer wins". An item-by-item merge is planned
• The stocks widget's data source (Stooq) could not be verified from an automated check. If the widget doesn't load for you, please open an issue

This release page is informational; the extension itself is installed from the Chrome Web Store. The attached image is only the banner above.

v3.0.0 — QUASAR: build your own dashboard

Nova 3 — build your dashboard, don't just tweak it

The biggest update yet, in four directions: a dashboard builder, a productivity hub, smart features that run on your device, and polish for getting started. As with 2.0.0, the in-between versions weren't released separately.

Dashboard builder

• Free grid — a new layout mode next to the classic zones: a 12×8 canvas where every widget can be dragged and resized anywhere (Alt+Arrows move, Alt+Shift+Arrows resize). 19 widgets take part; you can return to the classic layout or reset at any time
• Widget gallery — a searchable window to turn each widget on or off with one click
• Theme studio — save your current look (accent color, background, glass look, effect) as a named theme, up to 20, and share it as a copyable code. Uploaded images are not part of the code
• Background effects — twinkling stars, floating particles, aurora, rain, snow and an automatic seasonal effect, loaded only while selected
• Glass controls — opacity, blur and corner radius for the cards

Productivity hub

One button in the top bar opens six tabs (keyboard navigable, loaded on demand):

• Today — a daily briefing: today's tasks, calendar events, habits left, your active streak, and quick add
• Planner — a 7-day week: drag tasks between days (or use the arrows), an overdue strip with "move all to today", an "unscheduled" list, and read-only calendar events. Use +project to group tasks
• Board — a kanban board (To do / In progress / Done) with a project filter
• Insights — a 7- or 30-day range: tasks done, focus sessions, habits, mood and water, your active streak and best day, and a 12-week heatmap. Task stats rely on a separate completion log, so "clear done" doesn't erase history; counting starts from the upgrade
• Journal — one entry per day with autosave, a word count, a writing streak, search, "on this day", a daily prompt and Markdown export. Stays on your device and is included in backups
• Goals — up to 50 goals with up to 20 steps each, a due date, and optional numeric tracking (for example 12/50)

Smart, private, on your device

• Smart add — call mom tomorrow urgent is understood in English and Hebrew without any AI: date, priority, #tags and +projects. It can be turned off in Settings
• Chrome's on-device AI (Prompt API and Summarizer) — polish the briefing, summarize notes and add a task with AI (Shift+Enter). The buttons appear only once the model is already downloaded, the download starts only when you click it in Settings, and nothing you write is sent anywhere. Availability depends on your Chrome version and hardware. The AI paths were tested against a simulated API, not a real model

Getting started

• What's new — a short window once after upgrading to a new version (new users don't see it)
• Guided tour — five steps with keyboard navigation
• Automatic folder backup — choose a folder and Nova saves a daily JSON backup there, keeping the last 7 (Chrome and Edge). Chrome may revoke the permission after a restart; Settings then offers a one-click "Allow access". The files are not encrypted, so keep the folder somewhere private
• Leaner sync — when settings exceed the chrome.storage.sync budget, custom themes are left out of the synced copy first, then the grid layout. Local data is untouched

Languages

253 new strings translated into the 16 languages besides English and Hebrew (French, Spanish, German, Russian, Arabic, Portuguese, Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Hindi, Italian, Dutch, Polish, Turkish, Thai, Vietnamese). Translations were machine-assisted and not reviewed by native speakers; corrections are welcome.

Fixes

• Crowded widget combinations no longer let the central widgets overlap the top or bottom bar; the page scrolls instead when content is taller than the screen
• The +project chip no longer squeezes a task's text into one character per line

Tests

145 unit tests and 59 end-to-end tests, including an accessibility (axe) scan of every hub tab.

This release page is informational; no download is attached.

v2.0.0 — SUPERNOVA: the massive update

A massive update — almost two months of development in one release

This release consolidates and replaces everything built between v1.4.0 and v1.7.0: 7 new widgets, 18 languages (up from 13), a complete privacy & security suite (PIN lock, guest mode, encrypted backup), profiles and transfer codes, a free-form layout editor with 4 new themes, gamification, and a real performance pass (lazy loading, battery saver) — dozens of features, each tested and documented along the way. The in-between releases (v1.4.0–v1.7.0) are now hidden; this is the complete story of what changed.

New widgets

• News (RSS/Atom) — headlines from a feed URL you provide (no host permission — works with any CORS-open feed)
• Upcoming calendar — events from a public .ics URL you provide (Google/Outlook/Apple all support a "secret" public link)
• Stocks — a ticker via Stooq (free, no key, optional permission)
• On this day — historical events from Wikipedia (English only, optional permission)
• Timer + stopwatch — a separate panel with lap tracking
• Daily mood — 5 emoji + a 7-day trend
• Water intake — a daily counter with a configurable goal and a reached-goal toast

Language & content

• 5 new UI languages — Dutch, Polish, Turkish, Thai, Vietnamese (18 total, up from 13)
• Full content translation coverage — all 38 daily quotes and all 26 weather (WMO) descriptions are now translated into all 18 languages (previously only 8)
• Alternate calendar in the clock — Hebrew / Islamic (Hijri) / Chinese, as a second date line

Design & customization

• Free-form layout editor — drag a widget from the top bar to the bottom bar (or back), not just reorder within one zone — plus full keyboard support (Alt+Arrow)
• 4 new theme presets — Minimal, Neon, Retro, Glass — alongside the existing 6
• Custom font — any font from Google Fonts, by name
• Widgets-only mode, a live animated wallpaper, a weekend color variant, and a toggle for the background's slow "breathing" animation
• Auto accent color sampled from your background

Accessibility

• A high-contrast mode, global text size, and keyboard-based layout editing (Alt+Arrow), alongside drag-and-drop

Motivation & gamification

• XP and levels, 10 achievements, and a rotating daily challenge — entirely optional

Privacy & security

• Whole-screen PIN lock — a local screen-privacy lock (SHA-256, not real encryption), resets on every reload
• Guest mode — hides 13 personal/private widgets with one click from the command palette, not saved
• Encrypted backup export/import — AES-256-GCM with a password (Web Crypto, 250,000 PBKDF2 iterations), entirely local

Backup, sync & sharing

• Transfer code — a compact backup you copy/paste between devices by hand, no file needed
• Profiles — save named setups (e.g. Work/Personal) and switch between them with one click
• Day-card image export (PNG) — a shareable summary card of today's tasks/habits/Pomodoros
• Single-list export/import — back up just tasks, habits, links, or notes as their own file

Smart & automation

• Smart reminders in search — "remind me tomorrow at 9 to call Dan" creates a task automatically
• Time-zone lookup in search — "time in Tokyo"
• More conversion units — volume and speed
• Focus suggestions based on your day-of-week history
• Weekly view in "Your day" — click to toggle daily/weekly

Existing-widget improvements

• Tasks — #tags with filtering, reminder notifications, linked Pomodoro sessions
• Habits — negative habits (!avoid), a 70-day heatmap, streak badges
• Pomodoro — ready-made presets, task linking
• Notes — an interactive checklist, PIN lock, live word count
• Search — search across your open tabs
• Links — folders with filtering, bookmarks-bar import
• Crypto — a 7-day sparkline per coin, price-target alerts
• Weather — UV index and a rain/umbrella hint
• Daily quote — categories (mixed/motivation/humor/science)

Performance & architecture

• Lazy loading — crypto, stocks, RSS, calendar, and on-this-day widgets are now dynamically imported only when turned on
• Battery saver mode — turns off background/live-wallpaper animation and doubles network refresh intervals for live widgets
• Reviewed service worker resilience — the existing architecture (chrome.alarms + storage.local, no in-memory state) was already sound against suspension/restart

Fixed along the way

• A new timer showed 00:00 before the first start instead of the configured duration
• Smart-reminder parsing only recognized "text, then date" phrasing — the more natural "date, then text" phrasing wasn't recognized at all
• A task created from a search reminder was saved but didn't appear in the list until reload
• The crypto price-alert bell didn't show as "active" immediately after setting a target
• Keyboard-based layout reordering lost focus after moving a widget
• The "text size" slider — and every other slider in Settings — had no accessible label

As always: install only from the Chrome Web Store. This release has no attached download — GitHub Releases here are informational only.

v1.3.0 — Donations, habit reminders, undo, currency conversion

Donations & support

• Two more ways to support the project: Ko-fi and Buy Me a Coffee, alongside Patreon — three buttons in Settings → About (and in the command palette)
• Patreon URL updated from the old patreon.com/cw/MrIdan to patreon.com/c/IdanLights — the old link has been fully removed from the code, the docs, and the nova-privacy site

New features

• Daily habit reminders — set a time per habit, get a real background notification (chrome.alarms) that skips itself if you've already checked the habit off that day
• Weekly Pomodoro stats — a small 7-day bar chart in the Pomodoro panel, alongside the existing daily session count
• Undo on delete — an "Undo" toast after deleting a task, habit, or link, instead of a confirmation dialog on every single delete
• Currency conversion in smart search — e.g. 100 usd to eur, via frankfurter.app (free, no key, optional permission)

Design & UX

• Auto text tone by system theme — a third "text tone" option that follows prefers-color-scheme, independent of whichever background you've chosen
• Customizable keyboard shortcuts — rebind the search/settings/zen/command-palette shortcuts in Settings → General, with conflict detection
• Weather-matched "automatic" background — when enabled, reacts to rain/snow/storms in addition to the time of day

Performance & architecture

• Export/import a single list — back up or restore just one list (tasks/habits/links/notes) as its own file, without touching the rest of your settings

Fixed (caught by our own E2E tests)

• The new Undo toast inherited pointer-events: none from the base toast style (meant for message-only toasts) — its "Undo" button was visually present but not actually clickable. Found and fixed via a new Playwright test.

v1.2.0 — Command palette, 13 languages, real E2E testing

The big one — 24 improvements across every part of the extension.

Critical

• Real background Pomodoro notifications — chrome.alarms + a new service worker (background.js), replacing a page-level setInterval that got throttled in hidden tabs
• Sync conflict resolution — last-write-wins by updatedAt between devices (chrome.storage.sync)

New features

• Command palette (Ctrl/Cmd+K) — fast navigation, toggling widgets, switching language, and more; lazy-loaded (code-split) on first use
• Multiple notes + Markdown — tabs, titles, preview, safe hand-rolled Markdown rendering (no dependency)
• Subtasks and recurring tasks (!daily/!weekly) in the task list
• Weekly habit view (7 dots, like a mini GitHub contributions graph)
• Unsplash backgrounds (optional API key) with photographer credit
• Enhanced zen mode: hover near the top/bottom edge to peek the bars, auto-enter after a configurable idle period
• "Your day" widget — a short summary of tasks/habits/Pomodoro sessions completed today

Design & UX

• Live preview when hovering theme presets/colors/gradients in Settings
• Drag-to-reorder in the top and bottom bars too, not just the center
• Compact mode — higher density, less padding
• Smooth background crossfades when switching background type/image, instead of a hard cut
• Fixed: changing an appearance setting (theme/color/background type) was duplicating the whole Appearance tab's content on every change

Languages

• 5 more languages: Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Hindi, and Italian — 13 languages total, 194 keys each
• Full Intl-based number/date formatting for the calculator, unit converter, crypto prices, and habit-view date tags

Performance & architecture

• Uploaded background images moved to IndexedDB instead of chrome.storage — a routine settings save no longer drags megabytes of image data along with it
• Code splitting: the command palette loads dynamically (import()) only on first use

Privacy & security

• Automated CSP review (tools/check-csp.mjs, in CI): verifies a strict manifest CSP and that the codebase has no eval/new Function/inline scripts
• Strict backup-import validation — type-checks critical fields (background/widgets/todos/habits...) before merging, so a corrupted backup file can't crash the app after import

Testing & tooling

• E2E and accessibility tests with Playwright + axe-core (tests/e2e/) — smoke tests, accessibility (WCAG 2 A/AA), visual regression; run in CI (except visual regression, which needs same-platform baselines)
• Accessibility fixes found by axe-core: every switch/select in Settings now has an accessible name (aria-label); text-on-background color is now chosen by actual WCAG contrast ratio instead of a fixed brightness threshold

Website & marketing

• New marketing site at drummingbird1.github.io/nova-privacy/ — expanded from a single privacy page into a hero + features + languages + support page; the privacy policy moved to /privacy.html on the same site
• "Nova website" and "Privacy policy" links in Settings → About, translated into all languages
• Large marquee/promo image (1400×560) for the Chrome Web Store, generated procedurally (dependency-free, like the project's other asset generators)
• Fixed: the promo images were encoded as RGBA; the Chrome Web Store requires alpha-free PNGs — fixed to true RGB in both generators
• An automated screenshot-capture tool (extension/seed.html, excluded from the build) with 5 pre-built scenes

v1.1.0 — 8 languages, advanced Pomodoro, zen mode

Languages (8 languages)

• English is now the default language (changeable anytime in Settings → General → Language)
• Added 6 interface languages: French, Spanish, German, Russian, Arabic (RTL), and Portuguese — 8 total
• Automatic browser-language detection on first run (falls back to English)
• Daily quote translated into all 8 languages (previously bilingual only)
• Weather condition text (Open-Meteo WMO) translated into all 8 languages
• Task shortcuts (!high/!low, @today/@tomorrow) now recognize the equivalent words in every language
• Store listing translated via _locales + default_locale (name and description in 8 languages)

Features

• Patreon button in Settings → About (opens in a new tab, rel="noopener noreferrer")
• Privacy policy link hosted in Settings → About
• Advanced Pomodoro timer: custom durations, auto-start of the next session (long break every 4 cycles), and a system notification when done
• Custom background: local image upload + blur and dim sliders
• More search engines: Ecosia, Startpage, Perplexity, Yandex
• Zen mode (Z key) — hides the bars, keeps the center of the page
• Keyboard shortcuts for quick links: Alt+1..9

Fixes

• Pomodoro timer accuracy: timestamp-based, stays accurate even after the tab is throttled in the background
• Language-aware date formatting via Intl.DateTimeFormat (fixes grammatical cases, e.g. Russian genitive month names)
• Wind unit (mph when °F is selected), geocoding language mapping, centralized tab-title management
• Hardcoded Hebrew labels/aria-labels in the HTML replaced with the translated system

Accessibility

• Search bar with role="combobox" and listbox/option suggestions + aria-activedescendant
• Respects prefers-reduced-motion; aria-labelledby on the settings modal
• Native alert/confirm replaced with a translated toast and in-app confirm dialog

Development

• Extracted shared helpers (util/date.js, util/dom.js, util/ui.js)
• schemaVersion migration (v2); the (potentially large) background image no longer syncs to chrome.storage.sync
• 33 tests (up from 23), dependency-free lint check, .github/workflows/ci.yml, Prettier/EditorConfig/ESLint
• Build output moved to dist/ — the current version at the root, older versions auto-archived on every build

v1.0.0 — First release

🎉 First release

A complete new-tab homepage with full RTL support and full privacy — all data stays local.

Widgets: clock, date and a personal greeting by time of day · daily focus · task list with priorities and due dates · habit tracking with streaks · live weather (Open-Meteo) with a 3-day forecast · smart search (custom engine, autocomplete, inline calculator, unit conversion, !bang shortcuts) · Pomodoro timer with session counting and background sounds · daily quote (with custom quotes) · countdown · world clocks · crypto ticker · quick links, bookmarks and recently-closed tabs.

Customization: theme presets, backgrounds (automatic / gradient / photo / solid color), a custom color picker, the Heebo font, drag-to-reorder for center widgets, per-widget show/hide, Hebrew/English with RTL, export/import and sync.

Privacy & security: strict CSP, no eval, XSS and prototype-pollution protection, minimal install-time permissions (topSites/bookmarks/sessions and CoinGecko are optional, requested only on use), local favicons via Chrome's _favicon API — no external leakage.

Keyboard shortcuts: / focus search · , open settings · Esc close panels.

Quality: 23 automated tests (node:test), a packaging script for the Chrome Web Store.