Core How-Tos

Use the side panel & New Tab page

The docked bar is only one of the places your bookmarks live. There's also a resizable side panel that stays put while you browse, and a New Tab page that puts everything in front of you the moment you open a tab.

The three surfaces

All three show the same bookmarks, read from the same sheets:

  • Top bar — injected on every page, docked to an edge, hidden until you move the cursor to that edge.
  • Side panel — docks beside the page in Chrome's own side panel and stays open while you browse. Resizable, with bookmarks flowing into masonry columns and the header and search pinned while the list scrolls.
  • New Tab page — replaces Chrome's new-tab page with a clock and greeting, a search box, and the full bookmark browser.

Switch between the bar and the side panel

The bar and the side panel are mutually exclusive — only one is the active surface at a time. Clicking the URLflows toolbar icon opens a chooser that always lists both, so switching is one click:

  1. Click the URLflows icon in your toolbar.
  2. Pick Top bar or Side panel.

You can also set it from Settings → Side panel → Show in the launcher. Turning the side panel on turns the top bar off, and vice versa. The gear on the chooser opens Settings.

Turn the New Tab page on or off

The New Tab page is on by default. To change it, go to Settings → New Tab. With it switched off you choose what opens instead:

  • A blank page — the default.
  • A page of your choice — any normal web address: your homepage, a search engine, an intranet start page.
Getting Chrome's own new tab page back: Chrome doesn't let an extension hand the new tab back once it has taken it over, so switching this off can only send new tabs somewhere else. To restore Chrome's own new tab page, open chrome://extensions, find URLflows, and switch it off with the toggle — that's reversible and keeps your settings. (Remove deletes them.) For the same reason, chrome:// addresses can't be used as your custom page; Chrome blocks extensions from opening them.

Each surface has its own settings

Settings → Top bar, Settings → Side panel, and Settings → New Tab are three separate pages, and changing one never touches the others. Each one holds its own:

  • Bookmark link style — List, Pills, or Cards. (The Timeline view always stays a chronological list.)
  • Clock — show or hide the time in that surface's header.
  • Scratch Pad position — left, centered, or right under the action row.
  • Section descriptions — if your spreadsheet has a tab named Sheet/Section Descriptions (column A names a tab, column B holds a short description), those descriptions appear under the section titles. Switch them off here if you'd rather have the space.

So you can run compact rows on the bar, roomy cards on New Tab, and hide the clock only where you already have one.

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