Google Chrome is a popular web browser and one of the most popular browsers in use today. It’s also one of the most popular browsers in history, with over 1 billion active users. One of the features that makes Chrome so popular is its ability to let you quickly access different websites and tools that you use frequently. This feature is called “speed dial.” To make speed dial work in Chrome, you need to create a new tab page. You can create this page by going to chrome://flags/enable-speed-dial and setting the value to true. Once you’ve set this value, your new speed dial page will be created and will be populated with websites and tools that you use frequently.

Installation

The only thing that you will need to do during the installation process is click on “Install” in the confirmation message window to finish adding Speed Dial to Chrome.

Note: Speed Dial automatically replaces the default New Tab Page.

Once installation has been finished you will be presented with an “Information Tab” for the extension.

A closer look at the details for using the Speed Dial extension…

Note that you can not access the options for Speed Dial through the “Chrome Extensions Page” at this time. Access is through the main Speed Dial page itself.

Speed Dial in Action

When you open a new tab for the first time this is how Speed Dial will look. Notice that you can easily access the options, use a Google Search Box, have 12 “starter” dial-boxes, and a Recently Closed Tabs Bar.

You should go ahead and take a look at the options first. You will be able to make quite a few changes such as the number of rows (maximum of 6), number of columns (maximum of 6), add a background image (web based only at the moment), choose a background color, and/or deactivate the “Search Box, Recently Closed Tabs Bar, & Page Titles for the dial-boxes”.

To set a color for the background all that you have to do is click on the color that you like best.

If you prefer to have a background image all that you will need is the URL for the image and to click on the “Set Button”.

Here is the Speed Dial Page on our example browser right after a few tweaks…already starting to look very nice.

Whenever you find a webpage that you want to add to Speed Dial simply click on the “Address Bar Icon” to access the drop-down menu. Click on “Add Current Page” to add that particular webpage. Clicking on “Open” will open up the Speed Dial page itself.

Here is the “Right Click Menu” for the dial-boxes…

Note: You can also “drag and drop” the dial-boxes to switch them around to best suit your personal needs.

Here is our example browser’s Speed Dial page all filled up. Definitely looking good.

Conclusion

If you have been less than happy with the default New Tab Page in Google Chrome then you should definitely give this extension a try. You will not be sorry that you did.

Links

Download the Speed Dial extension (Google Chrome Extensions)