By MrSIHAB
The most productive browser Homepage/NewTab
Material Homepage, aka MH is a browser extension featuring productivity, minimalist and distraction-free dashboard.
Initially I developed it as a dummy project for learning purpose. Then I reworked on it any transformed it into a usable extension
for my personal uses.
Later on, I made it public. Initially I launched the first version of Material Homepage to Mozilla Firefox and Microsoft edge.
I wanted to launch it to Chrome Web Store too. But it failed for insufficient resources. Chrome Web Store requires a one time
$5 payment with a mastercard and probably user verification with that mastercard. It doesn't support any other payment method
available in Bangladesh. So, I had to create a bank account, make a passport, apply for dual currency with that passport and
get a mastercard from bank and make that payment. Which was much costly and time consuming process for me depending on my situation.
So, I delayed it for later. But there is another way to install it on chrome. See the Installation process.
Over the time I tried to improve it step by step. Since it is/was my primary chrome extension, I could easily get the needed
features and improvements. And it was a matter of joy that we reached 1.5k+ users without any promotion or affiliates just with
the version 1.
After a long time(2 years), I found that the extension needed a huge upgrade which wasn't possible as addition to the extension
rather than replacing the whole extension. While doing that, my current codebase which was a single JS file, became so messy.
So, it was time to make it Ronaldo. Firstly, I made the codebase modular and made the codebase more meaningful so that other
contributors can easily contribute. Although there wasn't/isn't any direct contributors till now. I redesigned everything
replacing so many parts, features, color palates. It was more like a rewrite in a better way. I spend 2 weeks and launched
the version 2. Which can be expressed by one line Brand new Material Homepage. You can follow the changelog to see what
have changed. I kept a last release of version 1 in github. You can still download and experience version 1 (discontinued).
In version two, I have added a simple developer credit with my Patreon account. Where you can show your support for me and my work.
- Modern, clean, and visually appealing design
- Distraction-free user interface for enhanced focus
- Multiple Search Engine support
- Dynamic theme with color palettes
- Automatic light and dark mode based on the selected color
- User-defined shortcut sites for easy access
- Backup and restore settings locally.
- 100% privacy proof.
- Default shortcuts for popular websites, including AI tools, social media, development resources, Google, and Microsoft services.
Material Homepage supports almost every popular browsers including Chrome, Edge, Firefox, Brave and probably the one you are using right now. Follow instruction below to enjoy Material Homepage in your browser.
Material Homepage is available in Firefox addon store. You can simply download and install from there.
- Go to Firefox-addon/material-homepage
- Install it
- If you see any banner at top or bottom, you can right click on that and disable that.
Material Homepage is also available in Microsoft Edge web-store.
- Visit Edge-addons/material-homepage
- Click on
GETand install the extension. - Open extension manager:
chrome://extensions - Turn on Material-Homepage.
- If you see any banner at top or bottom, you can right click on that and disable that.
Material Homepage isn't available for On Chrome web-store yet. So, you can't access Material Homepage directly on chromium browsers. But you can install Material Homepage a dev extension.
- Download the latest release of Material Homepage.
- Extract and move the folder to a secure location. Ex:
$USER/ext/ - Don't delete any files or folder even after installation.
- Open your browser's extension manager page.
chrome://extensions/ - Find out developer mode and enable that.
- There should be a load unpacked option unlocked.
- Click Load unpacked button and locate to the file where you stored material homepage.
- Try to select manifest.json file or the parent file.
$USER/ext/material-homepage/manifest.json - Turn on the extension if it is off.
- If any banner at top or bottom disturbing you, right click on that and disable that.
Congratulations. Your extension has been installed successfully. Enjoy your extension.
If you know git, it would be one of the best choice for you.
- Verify if git is installed on you machine.
git --version
- Clone the Material Homepage repository in a secure folder.
# Creating a ext folder to hold the package and moving there mkdir -p ~/ext cd ~/ext # Clone the repository git clone https://github.com/mrsihab/material-homepage.git
- Open your browser's extension manager page.
chrome://extensions/ - Find out developer mode and enable that.
- There should be a load unpacked option unlocked.
- Click Load unpacked button and locate to the file where you stored material homepage.
- Try to select manifest.json file or the parent file.
$USER/ext/material-homepage/manifest.json - Turn on the extension if it is off.
- If any banner at top or bottom disturbing you, right click on that and disable that.
Congratulations. Your extension has been installed successfully.
Update the extension anytime you want:
cd ~/material-homepage
git pullIt is good practice to reset the extension from the extension's setting page before uninstalling the extension.
Then open your extension manager page chrome://extensions and remove the extension.
Additional step: If you installed the extension using ZIP or git, you have to delete the folder where you stored the
extension. Ex: ~/ext/material-homepage*/.
No personal data is being collected. All preferences are stored locally.