A new tab dashboard for Chromium and Firefox — bring your search engine, your feeds, your weather, your links.
Most new tab dashboards (Momentum, Tabliss, Bonjourr, Mue, Renewed Tab, Horizon) lock you to one search engine — usually Google. Vantage treats the search engine as a first-class setting: switch between Google, DuckDuckGo, Startpage, Brave, Kagi, Ecosia, Qwant, SearXNG, Perplexity, or your own self-hosted endpoint with one click, right from the new tab.
Beyond that: 22 toggleable widgets, a place- and time-aware animated sky, multi-profile workspaces, and zero API keys / signups / tracking.
- 10 engines built-in + custom URL — Google · Bing · DuckDuckGo · Startpage · Brave · Kagi · Ecosia · SearXNG · Qwant · Perplexity · custom (use
%sfor the query). Custom dropdown picker, not a native<select>. - Full keyboard navigation on the engine picker —
↑/↓/Home/End/Enter/Escplus type-ahead (djumps to DuckDuckGo,bto Bing, etc.). /to focus search — keyboard shortcut hint shown inline.
22 toggleable widgets, all locally stored, all togglable from a popover quick-picker without opening settings.
| Hero | Status bar | Reading panels | Tools |
|---|---|---|---|
| Clock | Weather | News | Pomodoro |
| Greeting | Air quality | RSS / Reading list | Unit converter |
| Search | Calendar (iCal) | ||
| Quick links | Weather radar (Windy) | ||
| Top sites | To-Do | ||
| World clocks | Notes | ||
| Quote of the day | Bookmarks | ||
| Crypto prices | |||
| GitHub activity | |||
| Photo of the day | |||
| Countdowns | |||
| Custom iframe embeds |
- Drag-to-reorder — quick-link pills, reading panels, even custom embed panels remember the order you arrange them in.
- Click-to-mark-read — feed items dim out, panel headers show unread-count badges, one-click "mark all read" per panel. State persists across tabs.
- Quick-link folder groups — bundle related links into a popover folder pill.
- Feed dedup + filter rules — paste the same article URL across multiple feeds and it appears once. Optional regex rules can mute or highlight feeds by title/URL.
- Per-feed favicons in headline rows.
- Skeleton loading + last-updated timestamp + refresh-with-spinner on every async panel.
The reason the dashboard feels alive. Toggleable; defaults on.
Time-of-day sky with 15 color keyframes — pre-dawn, civil/nautical/astronomical twilight, golden hour, sunrise, midday, afternoon, golden hour, sunset, dusk, deep night. Sun arcs across the sky on its actual NREL SPA path; the moon shows the real current lunar phase computed from the synodic cycle.
Weather-driven layers — clouds drift at three depths, rain streaks scroll over a darkened sky palette, snow falls (with fat lazy flakes for the first 24h after the first snow of the season), fog hazes, lightning flashes (full sky for storms, soft horizon glow for distant rain), sun halos through cirrus, sun pillars at sunrise/sunset, rainbow for 3 minutes after rain → clear.
Locality-aware foreground based on your weather location:
| Latitude | Tree | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Tropical (|lat|<23°) | Coconut palm | Default for warm climates |
| Temperate (23-50°) | Oak / deciduous | Sways in the wind |
| Boreal (50-66°) | Pine | Slow narrow oscillation |
| Polar (>66°) | None — bare horizon | Open to aurora |
| Desert (Sahara, Sonoran, Atacama, Australian outback, Kalahari, etc.) | Saguaro cactus | Auto-detected from lat/lon rectangles |
Three-layer parallax mountains with subtle mouse-driven parallax shift. Optional coastal scenery (lighthouse with rotating beam + occasional whale-fluke breach) and urban scenery (distant city skyline with twinkling windows).
Astronomical extras — Milky Way streak across the deep summer/autumn night sky (hemisphere-aware), Big Dipper / Southern Cross constellations (hemisphere-aware), Venus as the morning/evening star, shooting stars at random intervals at night (frequency boosted 4× on Perseids, Geminids, Leonids, Quadrantids, and 5 other meteor-shower peak dates), aurora borealis at |lat|≥55° on clear nights, plane lights crossing the sky.
Wildlife — V-formation bird flock during clear days, bats replace birds at dusk for Halloween mood, butterflies in spring/summer temperate, deer silhouette at dawn in temperate/boreal forests, fireflies in summer twilight.
Seasonal particles — cherry blossoms drift in spring temperate, autumn leaves fall in autumn temperate.
Holidays — full 24h, all day (using the user's local timezone):
- 🎃 Halloween (Oct 31): jack-o'-lantern row across horizon, bats replace birds at dusk
- 🎅 Christmas Eve / Day (Dec 24-25): Santa's sleigh + reindeer crosses the sky on loop
- 🎆 New Year's Eve / Day (Dec 31 / Jan 1): random firework bursts every 4-13 seconds, all day, with random hues and 24-spike radial blooms
- 🎈 Birthday (user-set MM-DD): balloons drift up across the screen
Subtle interactivity — mouse parallax on the three mountain layers, page-load shooting star within 8 seconds of opening, all transitions honor prefers-reduced-motion.
Six wallpaper modes:
- Animated (default — the place-aware sky above)
- Solid color — single color picker
- Gradient — two-color picker + angle
- Image URL — any direct image URL with blur + brightness sliders
- Image upload — local file → base64 in storage
- Bing daily — pulls the current Bing image of the day, cached per-day
Animated mode includes Presets (Focus / Ambient / Showcase / Wallpaper), Motion controls (System / Still / Calm / Full), Atmosphere controls (Soft / Balanced / Vivid), and a separate Readability control (Minimal / Standard / High), so the live scene can be calmer, fully still, more visible, or more legible without changing the dashboard layout. Browser/OS reduced-motion changes are picked up while Vantage is open. The settings panel also exposes resolved scene badges and session-only preview controls for time, season, weather, scenery, and holiday states.
For visual QA, open qa-scenes.html from the same local server as newtab.html to review a grid of forced animated-background states. QA URLs support qaTheme, qaAccent, qaMotion, qaAtmosphere, and qaReadability in addition to scene overrides, so gallery cards are deterministic across saved settings. Local server runs use a small browser API shim for chrome.storage; extension installs keep the native browser APIs. Run node scripts/qa-scenes-smoke.mjs to verify the scene gallery and background-control hooks are present.
- System, Catppuccin Mocha, Macchiato, Frappe, and Latte themes with full design-token system, careful tonal layering, refined shadows, and ambient gradient backdrop.
- 9-color accent picker — Mauve · Blue · Green · Peach · Teal · Lavender · Red · Flamingo · Sky.
- Custom CSS injection — paste any CSS into the textarea; live-applies as you type.
- Locality scenery override — pick auto, coastal, urban, forest, mountain, lake, meadow, tropical, desert, polar, or none.
- Multi-profile workspaces — snapshot your current theme, scenery, background, and layout, then switch profiles with View Transitions. (Firefox: optional container → workspace mapping.)
- Onboarding wizard on first run — three layout presets (Minimal, Standard, Full) plus optional name + weather location.
- Reddit feed presets — one-click add for popular subreddits.
- OPML import + export — one-click export of all RSS + News feeds; merge-import from any OPML file (Feedly, Inoreader, NetNewsWire compatible).
- Settings JSON export / import — download your full config as JSON, restore it on any device.
- Config share link — copy a URL that encodes your entire settings as a base64 fragment; open it on any device with Vantage installed.
- Pomodoro timer — focus / break / long-break cycles with tab-blur auto-pause, cross-tab
navigator.lockssingle-completion guarantee, Web Notifications on phase change, and live<title>countdown. - Storage quota panel — see how much of your
chrome.storage.localquota you're using.
- All local —
chrome.storage.localonly. No analytics, no telemetry, no remote config server. The only outbound calls are listed in the Privacy table. - No API keys required — every external service used is free and open.
- Cross-tab sync — change a setting in one tab, every other open new tab updates instantly.
- Multi-proxy CORS fallback — RSS and calendar feeds try direct → allorigins.win → corsproxy.io before failing.
- Custom UI primitives — toggle switches, segmented controls, icon buttons. No native checkboxes or selects on the primary surface.
- Accessibility-aware — visible focus rings, ARIA-labelled controls,
prefers-reduced-motionsupport, semantic landmarks, dialog-pattern settings panel with focus trap and Esc-to-close, Windows High Contrast support.
Three paths for Chromium browsers, one for Firefox. Pick the one that fits.
Downloads the latest release, extracts to %LOCALAPPDATA%\Vantage\extension, and adds --load-extension="<that path>" to every Brave / Chrome / Edge / Vivaldi / Opera shortcut on the system (Start Menu, Desktop, Taskbar pin — user-level and system-wide). Relaunch the browser from any of those shortcuts and Vantage loads.
Run from any PowerShell window (auto-elevates to write system shortcuts):
irm https://raw.githubusercontent.com/SysAdminDoc/Vantage/main/scripts/install.ps1 | iexUAC prompts → approve → menu lists detected browsers → pick which ones → done. Fully quit and re-open the browser.
# Verify which shortcuts carry the flag
$f="$env:TEMP\vantage-install.ps1"; iwr https://raw.githubusercontent.com/SysAdminDoc/Vantage/main/scripts/install.ps1 -OutFile $f -UseBasicParsing; & $f -Verify
# Update to a newer release (re-runs the download + extract)
irm https://raw.githubusercontent.com/SysAdminDoc/Vantage/main/scripts/install.ps1 | iex
# Uninstall (strips the flag, deletes the extension files)
$f="$env:TEMP\vantage-install.ps1"; iwr https://raw.githubusercontent.com/SysAdminDoc/Vantage/main/scripts/install.ps1 -OutFile $f -UseBasicParsing; & $f -Uninstall- Download the latest
Vantage-vX.Y.Z.zipfrom Releases. - Right-click → Extract All to a permanent folder (e.g.
C:\Tools\Vantage\). Don't delete this folder — your browser reads from it on every startup. - Open
chrome://extensions(orbrave://extensions,edge://extensions,vivaldi://extensions). - Toggle Developer mode on (top-right corner).
- Click Load unpacked and select the extracted folder.
- Open a new tab. Welcome to Vantage.
When the browser asks for location permission (for weather), allow it — or skip and set a city manually in settings. To update: download the new ZIP, extract over the same folder, hit the refresh icon on the extension card.
Download Vantage-vX.Y.Z-firefox.xpi from Releases.
Temporary install (any Firefox, resets on restart):
- Open
about:debugging→ This Firefox. - Click Load Temporary Add-on… → pick the
.xpifile. - Open a new tab. Welcome to Vantage.
Permanent install (survives restarts): Firefox requires extensions to be signed by Mozilla for permanent installation on Release and Beta channels. Options:
- Firefox Developer Edition / Nightly: go to
about:config, setxpinstall.signatures.requiredtofalse, then drag-drop the XPI ontoabout:addonsor use Install Add-on From File. - Firefox ESR with enterprise policy: set
ExtensionSettingsviapolicies.jsonto allow unsigned extensions from a local path. - AMO unlisted submission: submit the XPI to addons.mozilla.org as an unlisted add-on; Mozilla signs it within minutes and you get back a signed XPI that installs permanently on any Firefox. This path is on the roadmap.
To update: download the new XPI, repeat the install step — the old version is replaced automatically.
I tried. Modern Chromium browsers (Chrome 137+, Brave 147+) now silently filter self-hosted CRX URLs out of ExtensionInstallForcelist — the registry policy is accepted but never propagates to the extension service. The only update_urls that actually install through that policy are Chrome Web Store entries. The launch-flag path above is the reliable alternative.
Stock Chrome / Brave / Edge reject every self-signed CRX dragged onto the extensions page with CRX_REQUIRED_PROOF_MISSING — upstream Chromium policy since version 75 (2019). The .crx asset on the release exists only for Vivaldi and browsers launched with --load-extension; everyone else uses the installer or ZIP path above.
Click the gear icon in the top-right of any new tab. Or click the layout-grid icon next to it for a quick widget toggle popover.
Highlights:
- Theme — System, Mocha, Macchiato, Frappe, or Latte, plus 9 accent colors and a custom CSS textarea.
- Background — Animated / Solid / Gradient / Image URL / Image upload / Bing daily. Animated includes Motion and Atmosphere controls.
- Greeting — display name + birthday (MM-DD; triggers all-day balloons on the day).
- Scenery — Auto / Coastal / Urban / Forest / Mountain / Lake / Meadow / Tropical / Desert / Polar / None — overrides the auto-detected biome scenery.
- Search — pick the default engine, or supply a custom URL like
https://my-searx.example.com/search?q=%s. - Weather — type a city name and hit "Set", or click "Reset to auto-detect" to use geolocation.
- Workspaces — name multiple visual/layout profiles, snapshot the current one, switch between them.
- Embeds — add any iframe-friendly URL as a custom reading panel (flight tracker, dashboard, internal tool, anything).
- Filter rules — regex
muteorhighlightrules over RSS / News by title or URL. - Data — JSON export, JSON import, OPML export, OPML import, share-link, re-run the setup wizard.
- Reset — wipe back to defaults if you make a mess.
Pure vanilla JS modules. No build step. No bundler. No framework. Ships exactly as you read it on disk — every file in src/ is what runs in your browser.
Vantage/
├── manifest.json MV3 manifest (chrome_url_overrides → newtab.html)
├── manifest.firefox.json Firefox variant (no module worker)
├── newtab.html Static HTML shell
├── src/
│ ├── main.js Entry — settings, mounts, keyboard, workspace bar
│ ├── background.js Service worker (toolbar action → open new tab)
│ ├── style.css Design tokens, type, motion, all UI styles
│ ├── storage.js chrome.storage.local wrapper with deep-merged defaults
│ ├── search-engines.js Engine catalog + URL builder
│ ├── settings.js Settings panel — composed from primitives
│ ├── widget-picker.js Quick-toggle popover for widgets + embeds
│ ├── onboarding.js First-run setup wizard
│ ├── icons.js Inline SVG icon library (Lucide-style stroke set)
│ ├── widgets/
│ │ ├── search.js Hero search + custom engine picker
│ │ ├── clock.js Time-aware greeting + datetime
│ │ ├── weather.js Open-Meteo weather pill
│ │ ├── airquality.js AQI pill (Open-Meteo Air Quality API)
│ │ ├── background.js Animated sky / weather / locality / holidays
│ │ ├── quicklinks.js Pill-row links + folder groups
│ │ ├── topsites.js chrome.topSites widget
│ │ ├── worldclock.js World clocks strip
│ │ ├── pomodoro.js Cross-tab focus timer
│ │ ├── feed-list.js Shared multi-feed renderer (used by RSS + News)
│ │ ├── rss.js RSS / Reading-list panel
│ │ ├── news.js News panel
│ │ ├── calendar.js iCal panel
│ │ ├── windy.js Windy radar embed panel
│ │ ├── embed.js Generic iframe embed panel
│ │ ├── todo.js To-do list panel
│ │ ├── notes.js Sticky notes panel
│ │ ├── bookmarks.js Browser bookmarks panel
│ │ ├── crypto.js Crypto prices (CoinGecko)
│ │ ├── github.js GitHub activity / trending repos
│ │ ├── quote.js Daily quote banner
│ │ ├── photo.js Daily photo (Picsum / NASA APOD)
│ │ └── countdown.js Countdown events panel
│ └── utils/
│ ├── dom.js el() builder + toggle/segmented/toast primitives
│ ├── drag.js Drag-to-reorder helper
│ ├── ical-parser.js iCal RFC 5545 parser
│ ├── opml.js OPML 2.0 import/export
│ ├── rss-parser.js RSS / Atom parser via DOMParser, CORS fallback
│ ├── sun-calc.js SunCalc-style astronomical computation
│ ├── weather-source.js Open-Meteo client with 10-min cache
│ └── workspace.js Workspace snapshot + apply
└── icons/ 16/48/128/256/512 PNGs + master SVG
| Outbound call | Triggered by | Why |
|---|---|---|
api.open-meteo.com |
Weather | Current temperature + sunrise/sunset (NREL SPA) |
geocoding-api.open-meteo.com |
Settings ("Set city") | Resolve city name to lat/lon |
air-quality-api.open-meteo.com |
Air quality widget | AQI / PM / pollen |
| Each configured RSS / News feed URL | RSS / News widgets | Direct fetch first |
| Each configured iCal feed URL | Calendar widget | Direct fetch first |
api.allorigins.win |
RSS / News / Calendar (fallback) | Used only when direct fetch is blocked by CORS |
corsproxy.io |
RSS / News / Calendar (second fallback) | Tried after allorigins fails |
www.google.com/s2/favicons |
Quick Links / Top Sites / Bookmarks / Feeds | 32-64px favicon images |
api.coingecko.com |
Crypto widget | Current prices for selected coins |
api.github.com |
GitHub widget | Public events / trending repos |
api.quotable.io |
Quote widget | Quote of the day |
picsum.photos |
Photo widget (default) | Random daily photo |
api.nasa.gov |
Photo widget (NASA APOD mode) | Astronomy picture of the day |
www.bing.com |
Background → Bing daily | Daily wallpaper image |
Nothing else. No analytics, no error reporting, no auto-update server.
See ROADMAP.md. Short version: AMO unlisted Firefox signing, Chrome Web Store listing, more meteor-shower-style "celebrate this date" calendar events, and continued biome / locality refinement.
MIT — see LICENSE.
- Open-Meteo — free, no-API-key weather + geocoding + air quality.
- Catppuccin — color palette.
- allorigins and corsproxy.io — CORS proxy fallbacks.
- Lucide — icon stroke style.
- SunCalc — astronomical algorithm reference.
- CoinGecko, Quotable, Picsum, NASA APOD — free APIs.
- Inspired by Epiboard, Tabliss, Bonjourr, Mue, Renewed Tab, Horizon, and Fluent — each great in their own way; Vantage is just my flavor.