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All of the extensions that allow you to change the the new tab page to a local file leave the cursor at the end of the URL, meaning that every time I open a new tab I now need to type ⌘T and ⌘A.

I would either like the URL bar to be blank or for all the text to be selected like in Firefox so that I can simply start typing.

willlma
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    possible duplicate of [How to make a blank page in Google chrome at start-up?](http://superuser.com/questions/206229/how-to-make-a-blank-page-in-google-chrome-at-start-up) – Nemo May 03 '15 at 11:52
  • I'm not asking for an empty page. I'm asking for a specific local html file to load. Extension mentioned in that solution suffers from the same flaw mentioned above. – willlma May 03 '15 at 16:09
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    The [extension suggested](http://superuser.com/a/600232/283120) works in my testing (Chromium 40) exactly as in Firefox (37): I don't have to do Ctrl-A, the only difference is that there is no "Search or enter address" placeholder. You wrote "I would either like the URL bar to be blank" so that seems achieved; if that's not your goal, please edit the question. Either way, the [New Tab Redirect](https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/icpgjfneehieebagbmdbhnlpiopdcmna) extension mentioned in other answers to that question can load a local HTML file as well. – Nemo May 03 '15 at 17:42
  • The extension suggested doesn't allow you to load a local file, just a blank page, and the New Tab Redirect extension suffers from the cursor flaw. I want to load a custom html page *and* have the URL bar selected/blank at the same time. – willlma May 04 '15 at 13:52
  • It seems not to be possible. See [GitHub issue](https://github.com/jimschubert/NewTab-Redirect/issues/46). – willlma May 04 '15 at 13:59
  • Thanks for the update! It seems the answer I read on a similar question was wrong though it had upvotes. :) You may want to incorporate your findings in the question, they are useful. – Nemo May 04 '15 at 14:08
  • It seems to be a weird limitation of Chrome. See my answer. It only works for local files. – willlma May 04 '15 at 14:40

1 Answers1

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There is no way to do this besides creating your own extension (see question comments for details). As it turns out, creating your own extension to do so is incredibly easy.

  1. Create a new folder
  2. Place the HTML file you want to load in your new tab inside it. Mine is called new-tab.html

  3. Create another file in the folder called manifest.json that looks like this:

    {
  "name": "My custom new tab page",
  "description": "Overrides the new tab page",
  "version": "0.1",
  "incognito": "split",
  "chrome_url_overrides": {
    "newtab": "new-tab.html"
  },
  "manifest_version": 2
}

  4. Go to chrome://extensions and click the Developer mode checkbox on the top right.

  5. Click the Load unpacked extension… button

  6. Navigate to your folder and click select

willlma
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    Looks like this browser is designed to make it hard to choose your own start page. I wonder why. :P – Nemo May 04 '15 at 14:45
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    Chrome now alerts users on every startup asking if you would like to disable locally installed extensions, so this isn't as useful as it once was. You'd have to publish your extension to the store to get around this – willlma Sep 11 '16 at 20:47
  • Chrome no longer alerts users on every startup. I've been running locally-made extensions with no issues. – willlma Jan 28 '21 at 05:31