Hackdrop

A new-tab browser extension that drops GitHub Trending and Hacker News into every new tab. Side by side, theme-aware, zero configuration.

Install

Works in Chrome, Edge, Brave, Arc, and any other Chromium browser via the Chrome Web Store, and in Firefox via Mozilla Add-ons.

Prefer not to install? The same page is live at hackdrop.theedoran.xyz — open it as your homepage, or just bookmark it.

Hacking on it? Build from source and sideload.

What you get

• Two clean columns. GitHub Trending on the left, Hacker News on the right.
• Daily / weekly / monthly trending. Your last choice is remembered.
• Auto theme. Follows your browser's prefers-color-scheme. No toggle, no flash on load.
• Cross-browser. Chromium and Firefox from a single MV3 build.
• Fast. Cached results render instantly, then refresh in the background.
• Quiet. No accounts, no settings page, no notifications.

Privacy

Hackdrop has no analytics, no accounts, and no third-party trackers. The extension talks to a single host, hackdrop-api.theedoran.xyz, which proxies GitHub Trending and Hacker News so your browser never contacts those services directly. Your filter choice and a short-lived cache of the public trending lists are stored locally in browser.storage.local.

Full details: docs/PRIVACY.md.

Changelog

See CHANGELOG.md for what's new in each release.

Build from source

Build, run, and load the unpacked extension

Requires Node 24+ and pnpm 10.x.

pnpm install
pnpm dev   # extension Vite dev server + Hono server in parallel

Loading the unpacked extension:

• Chromium: pnpm --filter @hackdrop/extension build, then load extension/dist/ unpacked at chrome://extensions.
• Firefox: pnpm --filter @hackdrop/extension build, then go to about:debugging → This Firefox → Load Temporary Add-on → pick extension/dist/manifest.json.

For a signing-ready zip, run pnpm --filter @hackdrop/extension package (output lands in extension/web-ext-artifacts/).

The extension calls a small Hono server at https://hackdrop-api.theedoran.xyz for both GitHub Trending and Hacker News data. To self-host, see server/DEPLOYMENT.md. To publish the extension to a store, see extension/DEPLOYMENT.md.

Credits

Hackdrop is heavily inspired by the wonderful Devo extension; all credit to its author for the original idea and design language. Hackdrop is a from-scratch reimplementation with a different content mix and a server-side scraper for trending data.

License

MIT.