Magnetic Dipoles
iron filings tracing a magnetic field

What you see on every new tab

Magnetic Dipoles fills the New Tab page with a dark plate of iron filings. Every filing aligns with the combined field of several bar magnets, computed from the real dipole equation, so the loops and arcs you see are the shapes a physics teacher draws on the board, moving.

• Field lines that never freeze: the free magnets drift and slowly rotate, so the pattern keeps reorganising.
• Bright poles: filings crowd and brighten where the field is strongest.
• Crisp at any size: each filing is an anti-aliased segment drawn per pixel, not a sprite.

Nothing is a video. The scene is generated live on your graphics card with WebGL, so it never loops and never looks the same twice.

What it reacts to

• Mouse: one magnet follows the cursor with a little lag, so the filings look like they settle behind it.
• Music: bass strengthens the magnets (filings brighten and stretch toward the poles); a kick taps the plate and every filing shivers.
• Night: darkens after dusk, following the sun at your location.

Free or Pro?Pro

Ambient New Tab is free to install, with three free themes. Magnetic Dipoles is a Pro theme. Pro is a one-time $19 purchase, no subscription, and it unlocks every Pro theme, music sync, and every theme we release in the future. You can preview Magnetic Dipoles 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 Magnetic Dipoles. Done.

Questions

Is the physics real?

Yes. Every filing is aligned with B = (3(m·r̂)r̂ − m) / r³ summed over the magnets, evaluated on the GPU each frame.

Is Magnetic Dipoles free?

It is a Pro theme. Pro is a one-time $19 purchase, no subscription, that unlocks every Pro theme, music sync, and every future theme.

Will it run on an older computer?

Yes. It is a single shader with nothing to allocate and runs on WebGL1.

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

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