Tabliss vs Bonjourr vs Dashy: minimal new tabs compared

Tabliss, Bonjourr and Dashy all replace Chrome's new tab with something calmer. Tabliss is the lightest and has not shipped an update since 2022. Bonjourr is the most polished free option and collects nothing. Dashy adds widgets, ambient sound and a tab that shifts through the day. Pick on maintenance, weight and what you want the page to do.

Last checked: 2026-09-02. Every store figure below was read from the live listing on that date.

We make Dashy, so read that column knowing who wrote it. Everything else here comes from primary sources: the Chrome Web Store and Firefox listings, the GitHub repositories, and each project's own site, all linked inline. Where Tabliss or Bonjourr is the better answer, this page says so.

What each one is trying to be

Dashy, ours, starts as a view and turns into a workspace when you want one. Wallpaper and sound first, then the calendar, notes and tasks you actually keep, on a grid you rearrange. The original is on the store today; the ground-up rebuild arrives in October 2026.

Tabliss is a canvas. You pick a background, drop a few widgets on it, and nothing else happens. Its own site describes it as "100% free. No subscriptions. No ads."

Bonjourr is a finished product with a point of view. It looks like an iOS home screen, it is translated into 43 languages, and its feature list includes the line "No generative AI" as a selling point.

Those are three different bets, and none of them is wrong.

At a glance

The Dashy store figures describe the original Dashy listing, which is still what you install today. The new Dashy arrives in October 2026.

Dashy: what it is today, and what arrives in October

We make this one and have put it first rather than last, which is the bias you should be watching for. Here is the version with the numbers attached.

The original Dashy is what you can install now: 10,000-plus users, 4.7 stars from 273 reviews and a Featured badge on its Chrome Web Store listing, version 6.0 from January 2026, 14.6 MiB. It has been shipping since 2023, with 36 widgets, wallpaper collections, soundscapes on the tab, profiles for more than one dashboard, and sync between computers once you sign in. It is also the heaviest of the three by a wide margin, and it is a 2023 design: a dense grid you configure before it looks like anything. That is the honest one-line criticism, and it is why we rebuilt it.

The new Dashy arrives in October 2026 on its own listing, with the original left running and nothing removed; the two are set out side by side here, and early access is the only way in before then. Four things separate it from the two pages below. Everything else in this category is roughly the same page with different fonts.

Sound

Neither Tabliss nor Bonjourr lists audio among its widgets, so ambient sound means a second tab and a YouTube loop. Dashy includes soundscapes on the tab itself: rain, ocean, forest, fireplace, cafe and more. Open a tab, start the rain, go back to work.

Light that follows the clock

Both open-source options rotate backgrounds. Bonjourr's photos change "according to the mood of the day", which is genuinely lovely. Dashy's collections change with the time of day too, and the page around them moves with it, so a tab at 7am and a tab at 9pm are not the same tab. You can also upload your own wallpapers, with no account.

Widgets that hold real things

Tabliss has notes and a to-do list. Bonjourr has markdown notes with checklists and a Pomodoro timer. Neither has a calendar, and neither connects to the place your tasks already live.

Dashy builds in tasks, notes and a calendar, and offers Google Calendar, Todoist and Google Tasks as integrations. The layout is yours: add, move, resize and restyle anything, keep several dashboards and switch between them, or start from one of four templates called Focus, Productive, Curious and Aesthetic. Your tasks, notes and timer also sit in Chrome's side panel, beside whatever page you are on. Customization is free and needs no account. If you want the longer version of what that kind of page is for, read what a new tab dashboard actually is.

An assistant that can arrange the tab

Dashy runs an MCP server, which means the AI assistant you already use can add a widget, set a wallpaper or draft a task list for you. You approve each app on its own, every change lands in a log you can read, and anything it invents stays switched off until you have read it. Early access now, general in October 2026. Details are on the AI page.

This is the clearest split in the whole comparison. Bonjourr has chosen not to do this. Dashy has chosen to do it carefully. Pick the philosophy you agree with.

Tabliss: weightless, permission-free, and frozen

Start with what is genuinely excellent here, because plenty of comparison pages skip it.

Tabliss asks for nothing. Its Chrome listing states the extension does not require any permissions, and its Firefox page repeats the claim in plainer words: "private, secure, and requires no permissions." Almost no other new tab page can say that. It weighs 204 KiB, which is roughly a seventh of Bonjourr and a fraction of anything with a widget grid. It is GPL-3.0 with 2.8k stars, so you can read every line, and the store records that the developer will not collect or use your data.

The widget set is broader than its reputation suggests: clocks, weather, quotes, notes, a to-do list, quick links, a search box, a work hours countdown, NBA scores, a GitHub contribution calendar, IP information and custom CSS, with translations into more than 40 languages. Backgrounds come from Unsplash and GIPHY, or your own files. For a page you open forty times a day, that is a good deal at zero cost.

Then there is the date. The newest build on the Chrome Web Store is v2.6.0 from April 2022. Firefox shows the same version and the same month. The repository has not been archived, but its main branch last took a commit in January 2024, titled "Updating deps", the repository was last pushed on any branch in August 2024, and 262 issues and 41 pull requests are still open. Nobody has abandoned the project on purpose; it has simply stopped moving.

That matters more than it used to. Chrome's extension platform has changed underneath it, image sources come and go, and a bug you hit today is a bug you keep. If you install Tabliss now, install it knowing that what you see is what it will always be.

TablissNG: the fork that picked it up

The honest recommendation for anyone who loves Tabliss is not Dashy. It is TablissNG, a community fork whose author says plainly that "the original project has been abandoned, with no updates for over a year and numerous unmerged pull requests."

It is the same GPL-3.0 code, still with no permissions, shipping on Chrome, Firefox and Edge. On Chrome it is at v1.7.1 from June 2026, 502 KiB, with 6,000 users and 4.8 from 27 ratings. On Firefox it has 1,324 users and 4.7 from 48 reviews. Those are small numbers, and 413 GitHub stars is a small project, so weigh that against the appeal of a maintained build.

If you are on Firefox in particular, this is the path of least resistance. Dashy runs on Chrome, Edge, Brave and other Chromium browsers, and does not claim Firefox.

Bonjourr: the free one that kept shipping

Bonjourr is the strongest free new tab page in this category, and it is not close.

It holds 4.9 stars from 23.9K Chrome Web Store ratings, carries the Featured badge and a "Featured in Google Chrome's Favorites of 2023" award, and shipped v22.3.0 in July 2026. It is 1.38 MiB. Its repository notes "No frameworks, plain Typescript & CSS" and "Only small dependencies", which is why it stays that small while offering 4K photo and video backgrounds, markdown notes, a Pomodoro timer, weather, quotes, custom fonts and CSS, dark mode and 43 languages.

On privacy it is unambiguous. The store records no data collection. The site says its two developers "actually believe privacy matters" and that "you can start using Bonjourr immediately, without needing to create or log into an account." There is no paid tier at all: "Since Bonjourr is free, respects your privacy and doesn't collect or sell your data, donations are the only way we're able to keep it running."

Dashy does not beat Bonjourr on any of that. Not on rating, not on size, not on price, not on languages, not on being open source. If those are your criteria, the comparison is over and Bonjourr wins.

What Bonjourr deliberately does not do is grow. It has no calendar. It has no ambient audio. Its notes hold checklists rather than a task list with due dates. And it lists "No generative AI" as a feature, which is a real position honestly held, not an oversight.

Privacy, honestly

All three pages work without an account. That is the baseline in this category and none of them breaks it.

Tabliss and Bonjourr both carry the same Chrome Web Store disclosure: the developer will not collect or use your data. Both are GPL-3.0, so the claim is auditable by anyone who wants to read the source. Tabliss goes one step further and requests no permissions at all.

Dashy works without an account, and nothing leaves the device until you connect something. Connect Google Calendar and that connection is disclosed per integration, so you know what is being read. That is a different promise from "nothing, ever", and it is the honest trade for a calendar that shows your next meeting. If auditability is what you want above everything, the open-source options are the answer, and no amount of copywriting changes that.

Sync is the quiet dividing line

This is where the free options show their edges.

Tabliss advertises settings sync between devices, which means your browser's sync carries the settings. Bonjourr does the same and adds two escape hatches: a GitHub Gist, or a settings file at a URL you host. That is more than most free extensions offer, and it is how you get a setup from Chrome to Firefox.

The catch is documented in Bonjourr's own docs. Syncing covers everything "with one notable exception: local files uploaded as backgrounds or link icons." Upload your own wallpaper and it stays on that one machine. The docs are clear that this is a browser limitation, not a choice.

Dashy puts sync across devices and connected services on Pro. That is the paid line, and it is worth naming rather than burying: the local experience needs no account, while carrying it between machines is what you would pay for. No price is published yet.

Which one should you pick

Pick Dashy if you want the tab to do something: soundscapes while you work, wallpapers that move with the day, a calendar and task list on the page, a layout you arrange, and an assistant that can set it up for you. It runs on Chrome, Edge, Brave and other Chromium browsers. We make it, so weigh that against the two verdicts below, both of which we mean.

Pick Bonjourr if you want the best free new tab page available today and you do not need a calendar or sound. It is 4.9 stars from 23.9K ratings, 1.38 MiB, open source, translated into 43 languages, and still shipping. If you are on Firefox, this is also your answer.

Pick TablissNG if you loved Tabliss, want zero permissions and the smallest possible footprint, and would rather have a maintained fork than a build from April 2022. Install the original only if you have a specific reason to.

Pick none of them if what you actually want is Chrome's own page with fewer shortcuts. That takes two minutes and no install, and we wrote out every way to change the new tab page, including the Edge and Brave equivalents.

One line each

Dashy is for people who want the tab to carry sound, light, a calendar and an assistant, and who will trade a little weight and a paid sync tier for it; the original is installable now and the rebuild lands in October. Tabliss earned its 100,000 users and its 4.7 rating, and then stopped in April 2022; use TablissNG instead. Bonjourr is the free winner on every measure that free should win on, and its refusal to add AI or a calendar is a position, not a gap. There is a longer side-by-side in Dashy vs Bonjourr if that is the choice you are down to.

Three good options. Different jobs.