AMOLED New Tab

A black-background new tab page for Chromium browsers, built for OLED/AMOLED screens on desktop and mobile. It shows interactive ASCII eyes that follow the cursor, a clock, an optional quote and search bar, editable shortcuts and a Chrome bookmarks drawer.

Features

• ASCII eyes
  • Expression presets (Classic, Sleepy, Wide, Squint, Glare, Close-set, Wide-set) plus random-per-tab
  • Five density ramps: Classic (· ~ o x + = * % $ @), Minimal (· : * # @), Blocks (░ ▒ ▓ █), Binary (0 1), Matrix
  • Pointer/touch gaze tracking, configurable blink rate (Normal, Calm, Frequent, Off)
  • Reactions: idle drift, double-blink on click, look away on right-click, scroll reactions, sleep breathing after 35 s idle, and an optional "dizzy" wobble when you shake the mouse
  • Scales to fit narrow mobile screens
• Search bar (optional): press / to focus; Google, DuckDuckGo, Brave, Perplexity, Bing or a custom %s template; bang shortcuts (!gh, !yt, !r, !w, !m); typed domains and URLs open directly; choose new tab or current tab
• Bookmarks drawer: open with the top-bar star or b; live search across all folders; drag a bookmark onto a shortcut chip to assign it; add or delete bookmarks inline
• Colors: 12 presets (Warm White, Cyber Amber, Electric Gold, Magma Orange, Crimson Red, Sunset Rose, Neon Fuchsia, Synthwave Purple, Cobalt Blue, Ice Cyan, Tokyo Mint, Terminal Green), a native color picker or a hex code; eye, glow and dim text tones are derived from the accent
• Quotes: random quote with copy button, can be turned off; cached and prefetched so tabs open without layout shift; offline fallbacks in fallbacks.json
• Effects: cursor/touch glow, click shockwave rings, right-click sonar pulse
• Shortcuts and layout: up to 8 chips with favicons, letter badges or text only; UI scale 70-200%; settings toggled off are applied before first paint
• Storage: localStorage cache for instant startup, chrome.storage.local as the main store, debounced chrome.storage.sync across devices; full settings backup/restore as JSON

Tech stack

• Chrome Manifest V3 extension (new tab override), plain HTML, CSS and JavaScript, no build step
• Node's built-in test runner for tests
• Permissions: storage, bookmarks; host access to two quote APIs

Getting started

Desktop (Chrome, Brave, Edge, Arc and other Chromium browsers)

1. Clone or download this repository.
2. Open chrome://extensions and enable Developer mode.
3. Click Load unpacked and select the repository folder (the one with manifest.json).
4. Open a new tab.

Mobile

• Extension: in Kiwi or Lemur (Android) or Orion (iOS), open Extensions, enable Developer mode, and load the folder or a zip of it.
• Home screen web app: open newtab.html in a mobile browser and add it to the home screen.

More detail is in docs/install.md. Usage notes are in docs/usage.md, and network and storage behavior is in docs/privacy.md.

Keyboard and mouse

Shortcut / control	Action
/	Focus the search bar (when enabled)
b	Toggle the bookmarks drawer
s or ,	Open settings
1-8	Open shortcut by position
Escape	Close any drawer, modal or menu
Right-click	Context menu (Settings, Toggle Quote, Toggle Glow, Cycle Eyes, New Shortcut)
Shake the mouse	Dizzy eyes (if enabled)

Tests

npm test

Project structure

manifest.json      Extension manifest
newtab.html/.css/.js   Page shell, styles and main logic (clock, quotes, search, chips, settings)
eyes-display.js    ASCII eye rendering, gaze, blink and reactions
preinit.js         Applies cached settings before first paint
storage.js         Layered storage (localStorage, chrome.storage.local/sync)
background.js      Opens the page when the toolbar icon is clicked
ascii.js, eyes.js  Helpers used by tests
fallbacks.json     Offline quotes
tests/             Node tests
docs/              Install, usage, privacy and architecture notes
icons/, scripts/   Extension icons and the script that generates them

Status

Active (version 1.4.0).

License

MIT. See LICENSE.