How To Restore The Old “New Tab” Page In Chrome 15

Recently we reviewed what’s new in Google Chrome 15 – the main visible change is that the ‘New Tab’ page has been redesigned to highlight web Apps.

However, this isn’t to everyone’s taste (especially the ugly grey bar at the bottom) and some of our readers noted that it no longer lets you pin pages on the ‘Most Visited’ list – so your most important sites may drop off the list if you don’t visit them often enough…

If you don’t like this new ‘New Tab’ page in Google Chrome 15, there is a way to revert back to the old page layout – which lets you pin pages again.

UPDATE Feb 2015

The solution originally listed below is no longer supported in the latest version of Chrome.
As an alternative solution – if you want a New Tab to always display a custom page of your choice e.g. your Home Page/Button or a blank page etc, instead of the usual Apps/Visited Sites page: Add the ‘New Tab Redirect!’ extension here to set up a customized New Tab page.

To Restore The Old ‘New Tab’ Page In Chrome 15 – you must change the Target line of the Properties of Chrome’s shortcut – this brings back the old ‘New Tab’ page with Most Visited, Apps and Recently Closed elements all in the same page:

1. Close Google Chrome completely
2. Right click Google Chrome’s shortcut (icon) on the desktop or in the Start Menu (or Taskbar or Quick Launch bar) and select ‘Properties’
3. Add --new-tab-page to the end of the Target line. Make sure you leave a space between the \chrome.exe” and --new-tab-page I.e. the Target line should now look like this:

  • In Vista/Windows 7: “C:\Users\username\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe” --new-tab-page
  • Or in XP: “C:\Documents and Settings\username\Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe” --new-tab-page

4. Click OK to close the ‘Google Chrome Properties’ window.
5. Now, whenever you open Chrome with that shortcut, it will use the old ‘New Tab’ page layout by default and you can pin sites again

UPDATE Feb 2015: the command you added to the shortcut is a special command flag and it has been discontinued now! Use the New Tab Redirect extension listed above!

7 thoughts on “How To Restore The Old “New Tab” Page In Chrome 15”

    • @Aneliya – this solution relied on a special command flag which, unfortunately, Google have removed in the year since we published it. I have updated the article to add a potential alternative which may be helpful.

    • The shortcut was a special command flag – as noted it could be discontinued at any time and, sadly, it has been in the year since this article.

      If you want to always display a custom page of your choice e.g. your Home Page or a blank page etc, instead of the usual Apps/Visited Sites page you can use the ‘New Tab Redirect!’ extension

Comments are closed.