iGoogle reinvented: Meet the perfect Chrome productivity power-up

I don’t mean to brag, but — well, my browser’s new tab page is much better than yours.

All right, so that didn’t come across quite as humble as I’d hoped. But it’s true, all right. I added an exceptional new tool into my Chrome setup a while back, and no exaggeration: It has absolutely transformed the way I get stuff done during the workday and made every standard browser setup look like child’s play in comparison.

It’s an interesting alternative to the simple sticky note canvas upgrade I mentioned for Chrome’s new tab page in my Cool Tools newsletter this morning. And while this setup is specific to the desktop computer domain, it connects to many of the same services you use on your phone — like your calendar, your tasks, and more — while also putting oodles of other useful superpowers at your fingertips.

Plain and simple, it’s one of the smartest and most effective enhancements you’ll make to your work environment all year. And it’ll take you all of two minutes to get going.

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Meet your Chrome browser efficiency booster

The wizardry at the heart of this hefty browser betterment is a simple-seeming extension I just happened to stumble onto recently.

It’s called Dashy, and while I’m using the Chrome-specific version on my computer, it’s also available for Firefox and Edge (and it should work on any other Chromium-based browser beyond that as well).

Dashy brings a customized and insanely versatile productivity dashboard into your browser. It replaces the standard space-wasting Chrome new tab page with a canvas on which you can place numerous widgets with all sorts of useful functions — like:

A glance at your upcoming events and appointments from either Google Calendar or Outlook Calendar

An interactive view of your pending tasks from Google Tasks, Microsoft To Do, or Todoist

A custom world clock with the current time in whatever time zones you want

A live look at the weather in your current area

An on-demand language translator

A simple voice recorder

And an intelligent tab manager and search tool

Dashy lets you configure your own custom Chrome dashboard, with widgets for all sorts of useful purposes.JR Raphael, IDG

You can add as many (or as few!) widgets as you want and both size and place ’em in whatever way you prefer. Your browser’s new tab page essentially becomes a rich info-packed desktop and command center, and you’ve got complete control over exactly what sort of info is included and how it all appears.

It’s kind of like a modernized and massively improved version of the old iGoogle concept, in other words — with even more utility and potential, both practical and visual.

To that end, Dashy includes an optional and customizable search box that gives you an easy place to search the web along with your Chrome browser bookmarks and history. You can also get Google suggestions there and even use it to perform calculations and other such feats — and if you’d rather use a search service other than Google, it makes it easy to do that, too.

The Dashy search box can be customized and even set to use a variety of different search providers beyond just Google.JR Raphael, IDG

My favorite Dashy feature, though, has to be the custom web widget option. With a few seconds of simple setup, you can create your own widget that shows a live view of any web page you want — a news or stock site, for instance, or maybe your company website for easy at-a-glance monitoring.

I’ve used that option to embed a live view of my Google-Calendar-connected Notion Calendar so I can always see a clean and convenient view of the current week and add or edit events right then and there, in any new tab I open.

Dashy’s custom widget option lets you add a live embedded view of any web page to your Chrome new tab page dashboard.JR Raphael, IDG

Dashy has all sorts of other interesting options, including a host of keyboard shortcuts and mouse-friendly hotspots you can configure to launch specific sites or actions when you click ’em. It can even integrate with your browser- and/or system-level notifications and alert you to those within its interface — visually and even aurally, if you want — to make sure you never miss anything important.

And, critically, any setup you create within Dashy will automatically sync and show up on any computer you use and sign into, so you never have to worry about losing your custom canvas or being forced to start over.

Dashy is free to use in its base form, with an optional $3-a-month Pro step-up that lifts certain limitations and makes the full set of features available.

It’s one heck of a productivity upgrade — and believe you me: Once you get used to the enhanced environment it brings into your desktop browser experience, you’ll wonder how you ever lived without it.

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More by JR Raphael:

8 AI-powered apps that’ll actually save you time

How to make the most of Google’s Find My Device Android network

10 forgotten Android text selection shortcuts