What Bonjourr is for
Bonjourr is a home page that looks like iOS and then gets out of the way. Two independent developers, Tahoe Beetschen and Victor Azevedo, build it in "plain Typescript & CSS" with "No frameworks". The README fits the whole product on one screen: dynamic 4K backgrounds, a search bar, an analog clock, weather, quick links, a Pomodoro timer, notes, dark mode, custom CSS and custom fonts.
That restraint is the point. You open a tab, a photograph from a curated Unsplash collection fills it, and the collection changes from morning to day to evening to night. Nothing asks you to sign in. Nothing suggests a feature. The people who love Bonjourr wanted a beautiful, quiet page, and found that most new tab pages would rather be a dashboard.
It has earned the affection. 300,000 people run it on Chrome, where it holds 4.9 stars from 23.9K ratings and a Featured badge, and Google put it in Chrome's Favorites of 2023. Another 11,469 run it on Firefox at the same 4.9.
Where Bonjourr wins
Start with money. Its site says it plainly: "Bonjourr is free". There is no Plus, no Pro, no trial that runs out. The developers write that "donations are the only way we're able to keep it running", and a donation puts your name inside the app for a month. Customizing Dashy is free too, and the local experience needs no account, but sync and connected services sit on a paid plan. If free has to mean free, Bonjourr is the honest answer.
Then privacy. The Chrome Web Store carries the disclosure "The developer has disclosed that it will not collect or use your data". The privacy policy goes further: "Bonjourr will never ask for or store any personal or identifiable data". It does fetch photos, weather, quotes and fonts over the network, through its own open-source API, and the policy says that API "does not save any logs or data". The code is on GitHub under GPL-3.0, so you can check the claim rather than trust it. Dashy works without an account and keeps everything on the device until you connect something. That is a good answer. It is not a better one.
Then size. Bonjourr is 1.38 MiB on the Chrome Web Store. The original Dashy listing is 14.6 MiB. A tab carrying wallpapers, soundscapes and a widget grid will not be that small, and we would rather say so than pretend.
Finally, the details. Bonjourr takes your own CSS, offers hundreds of fonts from Fontsource, and lists 39 languages on the store. If your idea of customization is writing a stylesheet, it was built for you.
Where Dashy is different
Dashy starts in the same place, a calm picture and a clock, then keeps going. If the category is new to you, what a new tab dashboard is covers the shape of it.
Sound is the first difference. Dashy includes soundscapes: rain, ocean, forest, fireplace, cafe and more, on the tab, with no second app. Bonjourr has no audio; ambient sound is not among its widgets.
The second is what the page holds. Bonjourr's notes understand headings, lists and checkboxes, and that is where your to-dos live. Dashy keeps tasks, notes and the calendar as separate widgets, and can connect them to Google Calendar, Todoist and Google Tasks. If you run your day out of a calendar, that is the difference between glancing at it and opening another tab to find it.
The third is layout. Bonjourr offers single, double and triple column layouts, and its docs note that the system "is currently being redesigned to make it more stable and easier to use". Dashy lets you add, move, resize and restyle anything on the grid, and ships four templates, Focus, Productive, Curious and Aesthetic, if you would rather start from one. All of that is free.
The fourth has no equivalent here. Dashy runs an MCP server, so the AI assistant you already use can build the page for you. You approve each app by name. Every change lands in a log you can read. Nothing it drafts runs until you have read it. Early access now, everyone in October 2026, and the AI page sets out the rules in full. Bonjourr's README lists "Privacy focused & no generative AI" as a feature. That is a position, and a fair one.
The honest trade-offs
Everything Dashy adds costs something Bonjourr does not pay. Soundscapes and a widget grid weigh more than 1.38 MiB. Connecting a calendar means data leaves the device, which is why each integration tells you what it uses before you turn it on. Sync sits on a paid plan, where Bonjourr leans on the sync your browser already does, or a GitHub Gist. That approach has one stated limit, "local files uploaded as backgrounds or link icons" are not synced, but for most people it costs nothing and it works.
Bonjourr's trade-offs run the other way. Its notes do not support "bold, italics, and links". There is no calendar and no ambient sound. Its Safari app has been "discontinued since May 2026", so Safari users set the web version as a homepage instead of a new tab. And two developers funded by donations move at the pace two developers move.
Dashy's own record is shorter. The original Dashy has 10,000+ users and 4.7 stars from 273 reviews, with a Featured badge. The new Dashy arrives in October 2026, and until then the original listing is what you can check.
How to decide
Ask what you want the tab to do while you are looking at it.
If the answer is nothing, take Bonjourr. It is free, it is small, it collects nothing, and it is one of the best-rated new tab pages in the store. We are not going to argue you out of that.
If the answer is something, sound while you work, the meetings in your day, the tasks you promised, or an assistant that sets the page up for you, that is what Dashy is for. The calm picture still comes first, and you still need no account to have it.
Either way, an afternoon settles it. Bonjourr has a web version you can open right now, and the new Dashy arrives in October. The other comparisons here are written the same way, with the concession first.