How to Set a New URL in Chrome on New Tab

Please note that all opinions are that of the author.

If you’ve ever used Chrome and wanted to have a particular url opened when you press COMMAND+T then this one is for you. This is an incredibly common use case that is mildly unbelievable that it isn’t supported out of the box. The default for Chrome when you press COMMAND+T seems to be “show me stuff I’ve used recently”. And that’s one of those things that sounds great until:

• You discover what you are getting for your birthday when you use your wife’s computer and you open a new tab
• You learn about someone’s personal medical concerns as you are watching over their shoulder as they use their computer. Erectile dysfunction? I’m so sorry – I didn’t know that about a next door neighbor.
• Your eldest child discovers what pornography his grandfather has recently browsed when he’s fixing his grandfather’s new computer

There are all kinds of reasons why you don’t want to know what stuff someone has recently looked up online. All kinds of reasons!

Happily there is a Chrome Extension that solves this for you:

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/new-tab-redirect/icpgjfneehieebagbmdbhnlpiopdcmna/related

You can have this load any url when the new tab opens. Personally I have it open a local home page which displays an enormous swath of resources that I use constantly.

Disadvantages

The one massive disadvantage to this is that if you had to shut down Chrome forcibly, the yellow overlay which offers to restore all previous sessions will go away the first them you use this extension. That nailed me hard the first time I used this. Now I’ve adapted.