This original privacy notes app is a perfect upgrade to the Chrome home page

Hey guys, these humble web browsers of ours sure have come a long way.

But for all the progress we’ve seen over the past few years, somehow, Chrome and many other modern browsers still fail in one very important area—and that’s what they show you when you first open them.

The standard browser new tab page is, to put it bluntly, a complete waste of space. Prime real estate—something you call for and look at countless times throughout the day—and yet, what’s there is often little more than a pointless placeholder.

So, what if you could replace your browser’s new tab page with something truly useful—something that could be a usable, useful hub that’s always there and waiting, no matter what device you’re using at any given time?

Friends who want to work well, I have just something for you.

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Your Chrome home improvement

If there’s one constant need in my life, it’s the need to write something quickly—to have a virtual Post-it note surface in front of me, in other words.

Well, dear dingo, that’s exactly what today’s Cool Tool accomplishes. And it does it entirely in your browser, with a great framework for taking your new tab page and turning it into something more useful.

➜ The tool is called Show. A flexible pinboard that lets you turn any browser tab into a personal and private notepad—no hassle, no cost, no catch.

And while I use it in Google’s Chrome browser myself, it will work fine internally anywhere the browser you use—on any device, too, be it a desktop computer or a mobile gizmo.

⌚ You will need everything seven seconds to continue:

• Just open manifest.app in any browser, on any device.
• You’ll see a simple-as-is canvas with a sample note greeting you.

And—well, that’s great!

• You can click or tap inside any note on the screen to edit it.
• You can use your mouse or finger to move any note, using the bar at the top.
• You can also use your mouse or finger to change the size of any note, using the lower right corner.

If you want to create a new note, just use your mouse or finger to draw a box in any size you want on the screen.

And if you ever need to delete a note, just click or tap the dash in its upper left corner.

Now you it can be use Manifest like a regular website and just open it as needed. (You can too install it on your desktop or home screen as a persistent web app, if you want!)

But your real power, if you ask me, comes from setting it as your browser’s new tab page—so is what appears every time you start the browser or open a new tab.

✅ Making that change is easy Chrome, Firefoxagain The edge– on both their desktops again their mobile forms. And once you’ve configured the right setting once, your Manifest canvas will automatically appear and wait for you in every new tab you open.

Now, that that’s what I call using space wisely!

• The Manifest is like that web-based application only. No download or installation required.
• It is completely free to use.
• It also does not collect or ask for any kind of personal data. It only stores your notes in your browser’s cache—meaning they’ll always be there and available that same device but not synced or saved anywhere else. (It is open source(also, meaning that anyone with a reasonable level of savvy can peek into the code that powers it and see exactly what it does—and doesn’t—do.)

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