Dashboard on new tab page should be customizable

[bsclifton]

Currently, a randomly chosen image will as a background and there are "top site" tiles being shown

Users should have the ability to:

• turn off the background images Allow user to show/hide background images on New Tab Page #4523
  • if disabled, user should be able to customize the gradient or have a solid color (custom background for NTP #15252)
• set your own background image Give users the ability to upload and use their own background images for the new tab page #19640
• turn off the "top site" tiles Add options to show or hide New Tab Page widgets #4510
• change the size or number of "top site" tiles being shown Add ability to customize number of top sites shown on Dashboard (new tab page) #6619
• be able to change what opening a new tab does Add new tab page settings #2999
• blank new tab page create blank page option for new tab page #4509
• Be able to edit and add "top sites" Be able to edit and add "top sites" shown on the Dashboard (new tab page) #7493

(issue carried over from browser-laptop)

[srirambv]

• Should also cover User installed theme should work with new tab #404

[ExpandingMan]

It would be really nice if the new tab page also allowed you to replace the new tab "top sites" with the users own customizable list of bookmarks as in opera and vivaldi (in those browsers there is simply a special bookmarks folder which shows up in new tab as "speed dial"). Presumably this wouldn't even require changing the actual UI since the components are already there for "top sites".

[perariontaeadastra]

please introduce disabling of the tab background images. it is an issue, when working over slow Internet and Microsoft Remote Desktop Connection. Screen refresh time goes up significantly.
It should look like this I think:

Thank you.

[aviaryan]

please introduce disabling of the tab background images. it is an issue, when working over slow Internet and Microsoft Remote Desktop Connection. Screen refresh time goes up significantly.

Exactly, Brave is said to be faster than Chrome but a default like this actually acts against it. With a fast internet, this doesn't matter but when on a metered plan and in a 3G area, this means I will have to go back to Chrome.

[deadcoder0904]

Yes to add I would love to have the following while removing background image

I think its really stupid to save lots of bandwidth while giving away so much bandwidth for new images everytime I open a new tab. The images are really amazing but atleast don't change them everytime I open a new tab. Changing them everyday can be an alternative till then :)

[socketbox]

Am I naive to think that the brave-core/components/brave_new_tab_ui/brave_new_tab.js file, which is responsible for a good amount of a new tab's appearance, resides in a location and format that would allow it to be replaced by a non-minified and uncompressed version that the user can hack? I've searched for it locally, but can't find it.

[eljuno]

+1 from Community for "turn off" setting
https://community.brave.com/t/is-there-a-way-to-turn-off-homepage-new-tab-photo-wallpaper/37587?u=eljuno

+1 from Community for adding more "top sites" https://community.brave.com/t/adding-new-links-to-new-tab-page/41858?u=eljuno

[Bunderant]

I saw this mentioned in the old thread on this, but I think it's important that the "top sites" be more customizable than just display size and enabling/disabling. It's nice that they can be pinned already, but strange that the pinned items get jumbled together with the unpinned ones, especially when just getting started with Brave and there isn't enough browsing history to lend "top sites" any substantial weight.

Bonus points if the "Add new tab" tooltip actually contains the icon links for pinned sites.

[snertev]

+1, especially for a solid color background instead of image loading.

[Brave-Matt]

Another +1:
https://community.brave.com/t/how-do-i-set-a-new-tab-to-open-showing-my-home-page/39708/2

[martin-labanic]

I would really appreciate the ability to disable the top sites list.

[dhondtlaurens]

Yes, i used to have following extension on chrome (https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/empty-new-tab-page/dpjamkmjmigaoobjbekmfgabipmfilij) but this doesn't work on brave browser.

[itsthejb]

Suggestion: I'm using the following app with Nextcloud https://github.com/jancborchardt/unsplash/, which gets splash images from https://unsplash.com. Really impressed with the images, it would be great to use something like this with Brave also

[kbrafford]

I love the background image when I am on the host itself, but when I fire up brave over an RDP connection the image kills my productivity and I have to carefully remember to shrink the size of the browser before opening up a new tab. It would be nice to set that to a solid color for accounts that I use remotely like this.

[gaelanlloyd]

Agreed, I'd like to have more control over the "new tab" window, including being able to just load about:blank and show nothing.

[srirambv]

+1 from https://community.brave.com/t/how-to-stop-the-stupid-stats-screen-coming-up/41633/3.

@rebron this one needs to be prioritized as well. Quite a lot of feedback from community and on this thread itself

[jordwalke]

I just started trying out brave. The new tab screen makes brave feel slow (even if it's not), and it flickers somewhere between two and three times flashing white and a dark image) which is jarring and makes the new tab experience feel lower quality. Other than that I've been enjoying Brave.
I would like to just set the new tab page to a blank HTML solid color and only add any functionality if it doesn't slow down new tab performance.

[srirambv]

+1 from @marc1uk via #2833 for blank new tab which was an option in muon

[karansapolia]

Don't know if this happens with everyone else too, but whenever I open a new tab and enter a web address and navigate to it, first after 1-2 seconds of a light gray blank background, the Brave new tab page flashes and then the website renders. Feels like the tab window waits for the 'new tab' page to render first, blocking the requested website till then. And this usually costs extra 1-2 seconds for all new tab page navigations. Seems to be a performance problem. Please allow opening new tabs to a blank page.

[srirambv]

+1 from @specter78 for solid colour background instead of a gradient. Updated the issue in the original issue description

[aaronsantamaria]

+1 for #5838
and
+1 for #6619
https://www.reddit.com/r/brave_browser/comments/jixyhq/dashboardnew_page_customization/

[rafaelcastrocouto]

It's developing but backwards ... 😪
Fixing top sites nor dragging them work anymore.
White icons became invisible.

No requested features delivered after 2 years:

• Can't customize background
• Can't customize top sites
• Not even a dark theme

As a bonus we get an over 500KB brave_new_tab.bundle.js

You can do better than this brave team.
The new tab is the first and most used UI in the browser, it deserves more attention.

[bsclifton]

@rafaelcastrocouto and others - update here about latest changes that were introduced with 1.17
#7493 (comment)

Now that we're integrated with instant service and other code from Chromium, we can look at pulling in the background image setting code without having to do everything from scratch

[rafaelcastrocouto]

Despite your great work @bsclifton, we DO keep getting things that were NOT requested (such as the new "Scroll for Brave Today") and NOT getting simple things that DO were requested such as:

Customize background
Customize top sites
Light/Dark themes

I really hope this will all be resolved soon with latest changes introduced by 1.17

I'll take this opportunity to add another item to the list:

Disable "Scroll for Brave Today"

[douglasparker]

I got tired of all the crap being pushed in our faces taking priority over basic browser functionality.

Brave is still an ad company after all. I switched browsers and you should too if they can't get it together and focus on what really matters: the end user experience.

[warwickmm]

I'll take this opportunity to add another item to the list:

Disable "Scroll for Brave Today"

@rafaelcastrocouto, is this what you're looking for?

[maxicarlos08]

Is there still no way to use your own background on the dashboard?

[bsclifton]

For folks watching this: we just landed the new top sites experience. You can add/edit and it looks loads better. Live on Nightly now - for some example screenshots, etc see brave/brave-core#7859

We'll continue to make progress on these - thanks for your patience 😄

[ghost]

Hey I am not sure if this is the right place to say this since I just started using git and brave but I'd like to suggest a feature to add live wallpapers as you can do in the opera browser. It's a really cool feature and actually opera is really upping their game with all these add-ons and stuff

[anujkmr953]

october 13th, 2021. still no custom background.just getting useless video call and other non essential things.Developers should focus more on Browser functionality.Android brave still sucks.Many glitches.What are developers doing!!

[anujkmr953]

Font of the browser settings still looks blurry. Not everyone has a full hd retina display. meanwhile chrome..opera and others have no problem.Brave community says turn off hardware acceleration( it has nothing to do when the font selection is bad in the first place)

[Marshi7]

It's 2022... Can you just add custom backgrounds already?

[rebron]

@Marshi7 Wanted to make sure you saw #19640. Custom background images was added to 1.37 earlier this year.

This issue is a meta issue with a to do list of several issues. We have two more items left that we're close to finishing up.

[fallaciousreasoning]

#6619 should land in Nightly in the next couple of days.

[rebron]

Closing. All sub-tasks have been completed.