Chrome Empty New Tab Page extension may no longer be supported

Topic

I am getting a warning in Google Chrome about my Empty New Tab Page extension that states:

“This extension may soon no longer be supported”

The extension function was whenever a new tab was opened it would always be blank. I vastly prefer that over anything more “busy”.

The warning also presents a link to “Find alternative” which takes me to various alternative selections – one of which is also named “Empty New Tab Page” – but not the same extension of the identical name I have used for years.

The “alternate” Empty New Tab Page extension has no indication that it is the replacement for the older Empty New Tab Page.

Any AskWoody members out there that may be using either Empty New Tab Page extension or have found another way of doing this?

The old extension shows as having 1.2K ratings and 100,000 users.

The alternate of same name shows as having 8 ratings and 673 users.

Replies

Pardon the ignorance, (and this is somewhat off-topic) but for the Chrome users out there who love digging into its settings to get it just the way you want it and not the way Google wants it, isn’t there a setting that allows you to specify the new tab page location within Chrome? If there is, then @castiel won’t need the extension any more and won’t need to worry about the warning that’s been popping up lately.

If there isn’t a setting within Chrome, then might there be a registry policy setting within Windows’ registry that might do the work of the extension that’s about to possibly lose support?

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castiel

What the Empty New Tab Page extension has been providing is whenever I would click on the “+” to “Open a new tab”, the appearance of the new tab would simply be blank rather than be filled with thumbnails or links or whatever.

Mozilla Firefox has a simple setting that does that (Settings > Home > New Tabs > Blank Page) but for reasons I will never understand, Google Chrome does not seem to have an equivalent setting available. Hence, my resorting to the extension for Chrome.

The sheer irony is that Google Chrome sees extensions as a potential malware avenue but fails to provide the most basic common sense settings which would avoid the need to use extensions.

castiel wrote:

“This extension may soon no longer be supported”

You’re getting this warning because that extension is still using manifest v2 and Google started removing support for v2 extensions back in June Manifest V2 support timeline and will eventually stop supporting all v2 extensions.

The new 127 branch they just released now includes that warning if it finds any manifest v2 extensions in use so users can find a v3 alternative. The problem is not all creators/maintainers of existing v2 extensions plan on rewriting them to work with v3!

Personally, I don’t use that particular extension but, to find out if a particular extension is still using manifest v2, open the link to it in a new tab.

If you see the following banner, it’s using v2 and will eventually stop working.

If you don’t see the banner, it’s using v3 and will continue to be supported.

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castiel

Chrome 128. Will wait until extensions stop functioning.

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castiel

You should be able to get what you want by setting the page you want  when opening chrome to “about:blank” (without the quotes). No need for an extension.

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Alex5723

@castiel isn’t looking to change the page that gets displayed when you start/open Chrome to be blank, they want the new tab page to open as a blank page!

Chrome’s built-in settings don’t provide any option to set how the new tab page opens so it requires a 3rd party extension to do that.

I am not sure how I made this happen. I note that in Chrome settings Appearance I have Show Home button turned on to New Tab Page, this may be relevant as well. I do know that when I open Chrome I get a blank page, and when I hit the plus sign beside the latest tab to open a new tab, it  always opens to a blank page.

ghacks.net has a good summary today of the Google Chrome extension changes:

About Chrome’s “These extensions may soon no longer be supported” message

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Alex5723

The warning for this particular Chrome extension suddenly went away and the extension remains functional.

I see it had been updated on October 16 2024 to version 1.3.0 with the comment:

“Version 1.3.0’s only change is to use manifest_version 3. For this extension, this does not affect behavior at all. The change is required to keep the extension listed in Chrome Web Store.”

Good things come to those who wait…no need for me to switch to an alternate…I’m happy.