Ambient New Tab for Chrome & Edge
A live wallpaper for Chrome and Edge. Paintings that move in the wind. Ink that folds where you swipe. A black hole, ray-traced. Kittens that nap. Every one of them is drawn live on your graphics card, on every new tab, and none of them is a video.
Three themes free. Pro unlocks every theme, $19 once, no subscription.
Most wallpaper extensions give you a still picture, or a short video clip that loops every few seconds. Ambient New Tab does neither. Each theme is a small program that runs on your graphics card the moment a New Tab page opens. Monet's pond is painted from twenty thousand brush strokes and then the wind moves through it. The ink is a real fluid simulation. The black hole is ray-traced. Because nothing is a recording, nothing repeats, and the scene can answer you.
Scenes made the way a painter would make them, then given wind, water and life.
Not photographs of space. The physics of it, drawn each frame.
Real simulations, kept just off balance so they never settle.
Characters with somewhere to be and something to do, every time you look.
See every theme, including the three free ones →
| Still or video wallpaper | Ambient New Tab | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | A picture, or a clip that loops | A scene generated live on the GPU |
| Repeats? | Every few seconds | Never; no two moments are the same |
| Reacts to you? | No | Mouse, music, time of day |
| Where it runs | Often a separate desktop app | Inside Chrome or Edge, New Tab page only |
| When it runs | Constantly, behind your windows | Only while a New Tab page is on screen |
| Tracking | Varies | None. No accounts, no analytics |
Add Ambient New Tab to Chrome (or Edge, Brave, Arc, Vivaldi, Opera), open a new tab, and click the Themes pill in the bottom-right corner. Three themes are free with no time limit. Rest your mouse on any Pro theme to try it full screen before deciding; Pro is $19 once, and every future theme is included.
Wallpaper that is generated live rather than played back. Ambient New Tab draws every scene on your graphics card each time a New Tab page opens, so it never loops, never repeats, and reacts to your mouse and, with Pro, to music playing in another tab.
Same idea, moved into the browser. Desktop live wallpaper apps animate the space behind your windows; Ambient New Tab animates the page you see every time you open a new tab in Chrome or Edge. Nothing is installed outside the browser and nothing runs when the New Tab page is not visible.
No. Every theme is code that runs on the GPU with WebGL. Because nothing is a recording, nothing loops.
It is built not to. The scene renders only while a New Tab page is visible, pauses completely when the tab is hidden or the window is minimised, drops to 30 frames per second on battery, and keeps its resolution under a cap. Once you navigate away, nothing is running.
Yes. Constellation, Marble and Synthwave, plus the clock, date and search, are free forever. Pro is a one-time $19 purchase, no subscription, that unlocks every other theme, music sync, and every future theme. 14-day refund, no questions.
Not in this version. Ambient New Tab is about living, generated scenes rather than still images. An artist marketplace for new scenes is on the roadmap.
No. It's a desktop browser extension for Chrome and Edge on Windows, macOS, Linux and ChromeOS. If you're reading this on a phone, send yourself the link.
