Happy Pet - Virtual Pet
A cute virtual pet companion for your new tab page
- Users
- 7
- Works on
- Chrome
- Version
- 3.0.2
Opening a new tab is the most repeated moment of your browsing day, and Chrome fills it with a grid of thumbnails you stopped reading months ago. This puts something alive there instead: the time, today's date, a greeting that changes with the hour, and a small animated pet wandering along the bottom of the page. The pet walks, sits, naps, runs and perks up when you click it. It is decoration rather than a productivity tool, and that is the whole idea.
When you'd reach for it
A new tab page that isn't a grid of thumbnails
The page shows the current time in 24-hour format, the full date with the weekday, and a greeting picked from the hour: morning, afternoon, evening or night. Stars, clouds and hearts drift in the background. A tip line at the bottom reminds you what the pet responds to.
Something to poke at between tasks
Click the animal and hearts pop up while it does a happy animation. Double-click and it falls asleep with little z's above its head, double-click again to wake it. You can also grab it with the mouse and drop it anywhere on the page. Left alone, it picks a new behaviour every few seconds on its own.
Picking the animal you actually want
Right-click the pet to open a small menu with four options: a dog, a cat, a bunny and a hamster. Each one greets you in a speech bubble for a few seconds after you switch. Your choice is saved in the browser's local storage, so the same animal is there the next time you open a tab.
Permissions & privacy
It runs only the code shipped inside the package — no remote code is fetched.
Questions people ask
How do I change the Chrome new tab page to something cuter?
Install an extension that overrides the new tab page, which is what this one does through the manifest's new tab override. After installing, every new tab opens the pet page instead of Chrome's default. Uninstalling or disabling the extension gives you the standard page back.
How do I change which pet I get?
Right-click on the animal and a selection menu appears with the dog, cat, bunny and hamster. Click one and it switches immediately, with a short greeting bubble. The preference is stored in the browser, so you only pick once.
Does the pet keep moving while I leave the tab open?
Yes. Every three seconds it chooses a new state on its own: standing still, walking, running, sitting, sleeping or a happy animation, and it turns around when it reaches the edge of the window. Each new tab starts the animal at its default spot, so the position isn't carried between tabs. The animal you chose is.
What permissions does it declare, and what is each one for?
The manifest declares storage, tabs and webNavigation, plus host access to all sites. storage is where your pet choice is kept between sessions. tabs and webNavigation are the APIs that let a background script see tab and navigation events, and the host entry is written as all sites rather than a specific list. The new tab page you see is a page inside the extension package. Those last three are wider than replacing a new tab page calls for, which is worth knowing before you install.
Does it change my search engine or my bookmarks?
No. Only the new tab page is replaced. Your address bar search, bookmarks bar and history all behave the same, and the page itself has no search box, so searching still happens in the address bar as usual.
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