What Momentum is for
Momentum opens with one landscape photograph, a clock, your name and a single question: what is your main goal for today. Everything else is optional. Its own help center walks you through turning the rest off, one widget at a time, until only the clock is left.
That restraint is the product, and it has worked. Two million people run it on Chrome, where it holds 4.5 stars from 13.7K ratings and a Featured badge. Its site claims "3+ million active users" across every platform. The photo changes at 4 AM local time and credits the place and the photographer at the bottom of the screen.
People who love Momentum love what it refuses to do. There is no grid to arrange, no drag handles, no empty slots asking to be filled. You read a mantra, answer the question, and close the tab. If you have ever installed a dashboard and then spent an hour arranging it instead of working, you already understand the appeal.
Where Momentum wins
Start with reach. Momentum's install guide says you can add it to "Chrome, Firefox, Safari (via Mac App Store), or Microsoft Edge in just a few clicks." The Safari version covers Mac, iPhone and iPad. Dashy runs on Chrome, Edge, Brave and other Chromium browsers, and nothing else. If your tab has to follow you onto an iPhone, this comparison is already settled.
Then sync. A Momentum account is free, and it syncs your dashboard across devices and backs it up. Dashy's sync sits on a paid plan. That runs against us and we would rather say so here than bury it.
Then the photography. Curated landscapes, one a day, each credited. You can save favorites and revisit old ones. It is the reason many people installed Momentum and the reason they never left.
Then integrations, where Momentum reaches further into work tools than Dashy does: Asana, Trello, Todoist, Microsoft To Do, Google Tasks, GitHub, Bitbucket and Basecamp 3. Dashy offers Google Calendar, Todoist and Google Tasks. If your tickets live in GitHub or your projects live in Asana, Momentum meets you there.
And then the restraint itself, which is not a gap to be filled. A tab that asks one question is a different tool from a tab that shows you eight things. Plenty of people want the first one.
Where Dashy is different
Sound is the first thing you notice, and the first thing Momentum charges for. Its help center says it plainly: "Sounds is a Momentum Plus feature." Free users can sample it inside the Focus session, which the Standard plan caps at one hour a day, with a "1H FREE/DAY" bar in the corner to count it down. Dashy includes soundscapes: rain, ocean, forest, fireplace, cafe and more, with no timer running against them.
The picture is the second. Momentum's daily photograph is free, but it is Momentum's photograph. Its help center says "The Custom Photos, Quotes, and Mantras features are exclusively available to Momentum Plus members," and choosing a fixed photo category instead of the daily rotation is a Plus feature too. Dashy ships curated collections that change with the time of day and lets you upload your own, without an account.
The third is what you can move. Momentum's guide to a calmer dashboard describes customization as switches: "Toggle on or off any widget, such as Focus, Tasks, Links, or Weather." Fonts and custom theme colors are Plus. In Dashy you add, move, resize and restyle anything on the grid, and that costs nothing. Four templates, Focus, Productive, Curious and Aesthetic, are there if you would rather not start from an empty page. If the category itself is new to you, what a new tab dashboard is covers the shape of it.
The fourth is newer. Dashy runs an MCP server, so the assistant you already pay for can arrange the page itself. It asks for your approval by name. Every change is written down where you can read it. Nothing it drafts runs until you have read it. Early access now, everyone in October 2026; the AI page explains how the approval and the log work. Momentum's Ask AI and Notes AI, both Plus features, write inside your notes. They do not let an assistant you already use touch the page.
The honest trade-offs
Momentum's paywall is not hidden, and it is not expensive. The Plus page asks for "Only $0.10 per day to protect your peace online." The plan behind that line is Momentum Plus, which the same page's own plan data prices at "$4.95/month" or "$39.95/year", with a seven-day trial on the yearly one. What is worth knowing before you install is how much of the quiet sits behind it: the ambient sound, your own photos, the fonts, the theme colors, the detailed weather, task lists of your own, and unlimited focus time.
Reliability is the other thing to read. The recent critical reviews are about stability, not features. One from August 12, 2026 reports an "extension may be corrupted" message "every week for the past 2 months." One from June 23, 2026 describes deleting it "few times to get it working after a few glitches," then ends "other wise really good." Momentum Help answered both in public. At two million installs a handful of complaints is not a verdict, but it is the risk profile of a heavier page.
Dashy's own record is smaller and we will not dress it up. The original Dashy has 10,000+ users and 4.7 stars from 273 reviews, with a Featured badge. The new one arrives in October 2026. Until then, the public evidence is the original listing.
How to decide
Ask what you want to happen in the two seconds after you press Ctrl+T.
If the answer is one photograph and one question, install Momentum. It does that better than anything else in the category, it is on four browsers, its sync costs nothing, and two million people are not wrong about it.
If the answer is a room rather than a card, rain or a fireplace playing, your own photograph behind it, the day's meetings and the tasks you promised, all arranged the way you want them, then Dashy is built for that, and the arranging is free.
Trying both costs an afternoon. Momentum's free plan is enough to judge the feel of it, and the new Dashy arrives in October 2026. Other options are covered the same way, concession first, in the rest of the comparisons.