What Tabliss is for
Tabliss asks nothing of you. No account, no sign-in and, the part its fans repeat most often, no permissions. The Chrome Web Store description says it in one line: "Private, secure, and requires no permissions." Firefox Add-ons says the same thing in its own way, that the extension "does not require any permissions."
What you get is a photograph and a small set of things you place on top of it. Backgrounds come from Unsplash and GIPHY, or from a colour, a gradient, or a file you upload. The widgets cover an analogue or digital clock, greetings that change through the day, weather, daily quotes, todo lists, notes, a speed dial, a search box and work hours, plus a few oddities like NBA scores, an IP readout and a GitHub contribution calendar. There is a custom CSS box for people who want to push further, and translations for over 40 languages.
100,000 people run it on Chrome, where it holds 4.7 stars from 385 ratings and a Featured badge. Another 72,866 run it on Firefox at 4.6 from 2,442 reviews. Its own site says it is "Greeting nearly 100,000 users every day," and the footer reads "© 2022."
That copyright line is not a typo.
Where Tabliss genuinely wins
Permissions first, because it is the strongest claim anyone can make about a page that loads every time you open a tab. Most new tab pages ask to read something. Tabliss asks for nothing, and both stores confirm it. If that is your bar, this comparison is already over, and we would rather say so than talk around it.
Then money. Its site is blunt: "Tabliss is 100% free. No ads. No subscriptions. No data mining." Nothing is held back for an upgrade screen. Dashy's customization is free too, and the local page needs no account, but sync and connected services sit on a paid plan. Free wins that one outright.
Then weight. Tabliss is 204 KiB on the Chrome Web Store. The original Dashy listing is 14.6 MiB. A page that carries wallpapers, soundscapes and a widget grid is never going to be that small, and pretending otherwise would be silly.
Then the code. It is open source under GPL-3.0, with 2,782 stars and 395 forks on GitHub. You can read what it does rather than take anyone's word for it.
And then Firefox. Tabliss's second store is nearly as large as its first. Dashy runs on Chrome, Edge, Brave and other Chromium browsers, so if Firefox is your browser, Dashy is not an option today.
Where Dashy is different
The first difference is not a feature. Tabliss's last release in either store was version 2.6.0 on April 25, 2022. The GitHub repository was last pushed in August 2024 and carries 262 open issues and 41 open pull requests. It has not been archived and the site is still up, so the page keeps working, but nothing has reached users in over four years. Dashy is mid-build, and the new version arrives in October 2026. If you are weighing up the category itself, what a new tab dashboard is covers the shape of it.
The second is sound. Dashy includes soundscapes on the tab: rain, ocean, forest, fireplace, cafe and more, with nothing else to install. Tabliss has no audio widget at all.
The third is what the page can hold. Tabliss gives you a todo list and a notes block, which is enough for many people. Dashy treats tasks, notes and the calendar as separate widgets and can connect them to Google Calendar, Todoist and Google Tasks. That is the difference between glancing at your day and opening another tab to find it.
The fourth is layout. In Tabliss, each widget takes one of nine fixed positions on a 3x3 grid, chosen in its settings panel. The clearest evidence of how tight that feels comes from its own fork, which added a "Free Move" mode specifically so people could put things where they wanted. In Dashy you add, move, resize and restyle anything on the grid, and four templates, Focus, Productive, Curious and Aesthetic, are there if starting from an empty page sounds like work. Customization is free.
The fifth is new enough that no page from 2022 could have had it. Dashy runs an MCP server, so an assistant of your own can arrange the tab for you. You name the app before it gets in, its edits are written down, and anything it invents waits for your yes. Early access now, and the AI page explains how the approval step works.
The honest trade-offs
If what you want is maintained Tabliss, the honest recommendation is not Dashy. It is TablissNG, the community fork. Its README states the case directly: "The original project has been abandoned, with no updates for over a year and numerous unmerged pull requests." The fork merged the pending work, added widgets and background sources, fixed dark mode, and ships on Chrome, Firefox and Edge. It is free, GPL-3.0, and small. It is also young: 6,000 users on Chrome against the original's 100,000, and one maintainer carrying it. If Bonjourr is also on your list, the three-way comparison sets all three side by side.
Everything Dashy adds has a cost Tabliss never pays. Soundscapes and a widget grid weigh more than 204 KiB. Connecting a calendar means data leaves your device, which is why each integration tells you what it uses before you switch it on. Sync sits on a paid plan, where Tabliss leans on whatever sync your browser already does.
Our own numbers are smaller too. The original Dashy has 10,000+ users and 4.7 stars from 273 reviews with a Featured badge, against Tabliss's 100,000 on Chrome and 72,866 on Firefox. The new Dashy arrives in October, and until then the record is the original's.
How to decide
Ask how much you want the page to do, and how much you mind that it will never change.
If the answer is a picture, a clock and a todo list, and you would rather have zero permissions than any new feature, stay with Tabliss. It is free, it is tiny, it collects nothing, and it still works. If you want that same page but maintained, install TablissNG instead and skip the rest of this.
If the answer is more, sound while you work, your week on the tab, a layout you drag into shape, or an assistant that sets the page up and waits for your approval, that is what Dashy is for. You still get the calm picture first, and you still do not need an account to have it.
The other comparisons are written the same way, with the concession first.