Have you noticed? We’ve updated our nifty New Tab Page extension

Over 80,000 users love our New Tab Page browser extension. They give us an overall rating of 4,1 in the Chrome Web Store, which is great! We still saw room for improvement, though. So, we’ve made it easier to use, more elegant to look at, and more privacy friendly. Here’s how we did this.

Major new feature: search anywhere

But first, let’s introduce our major new feature: search directly from the address bar. Now you can jump to your bookmarks straight the address bar, from any page.

No need to return to your start.me page first. Talk about saving time!

Here’s what you do:

1. Make sure you’ve installed the New Tab Extension, version 2.2.24. You can get it in the Chrome Web Store, the Firefox Add-on Store, or the Edge Web Store.
   If you’ve already installed it, it will update automatically. Click the extension icon > Options, and you’ll find your version number in the lower right corner.
2. Now, go to the Address bar of your browser, and typ in “me”, as in start.me. Then press space.
3. You’ll notice that there will appear a grey start.me icon, as well as the words start.me.
4. Now start typing the title of your bookmark you’re looking for. You’ll see your saved bookmarks immediately.

Second new feature: keyboard shortcuts

If you want to add bookmarks or return to your start.me homepage, you can get there by clicking our extension or the home icon in your browser.

You still need a mouse, though. But what if you don’t want your hands to leave the keyboard? This is where our shortcuts come in.

Press Alt-h to leave your current browser tab and jump to your start.me homepage. Note: if you’re entering information in a form, you’ll be asked to save it first.

Press Alt-b to bookmark your current browser tab.

Here’s how you set your own:

1. Click the New Tab extension Icon.
2. Click Options.
3. Select the tab Shortcuts.
4. Now you’ll see the current start.me shortcuts. Click Change to jump to the Chrome Extensions Tab to set your custom shortcut.

Other Design Improvements

Besides these new features, we’ve also updated the design of the extension. We wanted to make it less cluttered.

Here’s what we did:

• Reduced the Permissions required for this extension. The extension is now safer to use than ever. We want to protect your privacy as much as possible. Read the Privacy Declaration for more details.
• Make Bookmark Groups available in the destination widget. Before this, you could only use the extension to add to entire widgets.
• Integrate Options into the extension. Now you can set your new tab page, import bookmarks from the browser, or jump to your account details to change your user settings.
  
• Fixed several bugs.

Two bonus features

This article wouldn’t be complete without mentioning these two bonus features:

• Context menu adding. Whenever you’re on a page with a hyperlink, you can hover the link, right-click it, and select Add to start.me. This will open the extension, so you can add the link to your collection.
• Alternative to New Tab Page extension. If you don’t want us to change your New Tab Page, that’s no problem. We’ve always advised our users in that case, to uninstall the extension and use the bookmarklet instead. As of today, these users can also add our brand-new Bookmarker extension. Version 1.0.0. You get the same functionality, without the set New Tab Page option. NOTE: you only need one of the two extensions, not both.

  

  You can get the Bookmarker in the Chrome Web Store, the Firefox Add-on Store, or the Edge Web Store.

What do you think?

If you like this article, please share it with someone who might appreciate it too. Also, we’d love to read and respond to your thoughts in the comments. Let’s continue building and improving start.me together!