Above the Storm
a night thunderstorm seen from above the clouds

What you see on every new tab

Above the Storm puts the New Tab page at cruising altitude over a thunderstorm at night, the way a jet sees it. The clouds are real volumes, marched ray by ray on your graphics card, so they boil, drift and catch the light of every flash from the inside.

• The clouds: a lumpy deck below, a long layered shelf on the left, and one cumulonimbus tower on the right with an orange furnace glowing inside it. A billow turns over in about forty seconds.
• Four kinds of lightning: glow pulses inside the tower, thin crawlers across the open sky, flashes buried in the shelf and the deck, and now and then a big white column from the top of the tower.
• Bursts: every half minute or so a cell fires two to four strikes in a row, then the sky goes quiet again.

Nothing is a video. The clouds and the lightning are computed live on your graphics card with WebGL, and the strikes are not on a loop.

What it reacts to

• Mouse: the view shifts slightly with your cursor, like leaning toward the window.
• Click: click the open sky and a crawler runs from that spot; click a cloud and it flashes from inside.
• Music: with music sync on, bass brightens the furnace and brings more lightning, and a hard kick fires a strike.
• Night: after dusk the sky gets darker, the stars brighter and the flashes stronger.

Free or Pro?Pro

Ambient New Tab is free to install, with three free themes. Above the Storm is a Pro theme. Pro is $5.99 a month or $39.99 a year, cancel anytime, and it unlocks every Pro theme, music sync, and every new theme as we release it. You can preview Above the Storm full screen before you buy: open the Themes panel and rest your mouse on it. Changed your mind? 14-day refund, no questions.

How to get it

1. Add Ambient New Tab to Chrome (or Edge, Brave, Arc, Vivaldi, Opera).
2. Open a new tab and click the Themes pill in the bottom-right corner.
3. Pick Above the Storm. Done.

Questions

Is it a video of a real storm?

No. There is no footage and no photo. The clouds are volumes computed on your graphics card every frame, and each strike is placed and timed as it happens.

Is Above the Storm free?

It is a Pro theme. Pro is $5.99 a month or $39.99 a year. It unlocks every Pro theme, music sync, and every new theme as it is released. Cancel anytime.

Can I make lightning myself?

Yes. Click anywhere in the sky for a crawler from that point, or click a cloud to light it from inside.

Does it work on my phone?

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.

More themes

See every theme →