What's New

A store-compliance release: web search now always respects the search engine you chose in your browser.

Added

• "Browser default" search engine. The search bar's engine picker gains a "Browser default" option, and it is the new default: web searches go through your browser's own default search engine instead of a fixed provider. Explicitly picking Google, DuckDuckGo, Bing, Brave, Yahoo or Ecosia works exactly as before.

Changed

• Your items come first in the search dropdown. Results from your boards now render above the "Search web for ..." row, which moved to the bottom. It stays selected, so pressing Enter still searches the web; the arrow keys walk through your items and wrap around the ends of the list.
• Spotlight web search honors your engine. The spotlight overlay's web-search row used to always open Google; it now uses your browser's default engine, or the one you explicitly picked in settings.
• Clearer search bar hint. The placeholder now reads "Search your items or the web..." to reflect that your saved items are searched first (updated in all 10 languages).
• Light is the default theme. Fresh installs (and the Layout tab's Reset button) now start on the Light theme instead of Simple. Existing setups keep their chosen theme.

Removed

• The "rt" address-bar keyword. Searching saved links by typing "rt" in the browser's address bar was removed to comply with the Chrome Web Store single-purpose policy for new-tab extensions.

A big board and tasks release: the layout grid doubles to 24 columns for far finer placement, Shortcuts gain square tile looks, and tasks get one-shot reminders with browser notifications.

Added

• Twice the layout precision. The board grid now has 24 columns instead of 12. Existing boards migrate automatically and keep their exact look; every move and resize simply snaps in steps half as wide, so groups and widgets can be placed and sized much more precisely.
• Tile shortcuts. Shortcuts have two new display styles: Tile, a compact square icon card, and Large tile, a bigger square for the things you open most. Labels are optional, so a row of tiles can double as a clean icon dock.
• Task reminders. Every task and task list in the Tasks hub now has a bell: pick a preset (15 min, 30 min, 1 hour, tomorrow) or a custom time and ReadyTab fires a browser notification, even with no tab open. Reminders are one-shot, stay on this device only, and require the notification permission which is requested on first use. Tasks in protected workspaces show a generic "Task reminder" so their text never appears on a lock screen.
• Remaining-tasks badge. The Tasks button shows how many open tasks the current workspace has, so the hub is worth opening before you open it.
• Edit tasks in place. A pencil button on each task row in the Tasks hub turns the text into an inline editor (Enter saves, Escape cancels), and long tasks now wrap across lines instead of being cut off.
• Convert group items straight to tiles. The item menu's convert action now offers all three looks - standard Shortcut, Tile, or Large tile - for links, clipboard, launcher, and routine items alike, and the converted element lands right below your existing shortcuts.

Changed

• Tasks and Notes moved into the search bar. The two hub buttons now sit inside the search bar as compact accent-colored chips behind a thin separator, so the bar and its companions read as one centered unit. With the search bar turned off they keep their old spot above the board.
• Smoother dragging on full boards. Moving groups and tiles no longer re-computes the layout on every pixel, which removes the stutter while dragging on large boards.
• The CTA banner style for Shortcuts has been retired. Existing banner Shortcuts keep working and now render as standard Shortcuts.
• Free placement in the top shortcuts zone. Widgets in the action bar above the board now stay exactly where you drop them instead of packing to the left, matching how the main board has always worked.

Fixed

• A stale tab can no longer overwrite another workspace's board. Several cross-tab write paths could push an outdated copy of your workspaces over a newer one; every one of them now goes through the same guarded save.
• Renaming a workspace keeps its notes, tasks and reminders. They were stored under the old workspace name and silently disappeared after a rename.
• Deleting a group or workspace cleans up its reminders. A reminder for a deleted task list no longer fires afterwards, and undoing a group delete brings its reminder back.
• Fixed a crash when opening the edit drawer for some Shortcut display styles.

A hardening pass on the 1.5.3 spotlight features: saving links after the browser has been idle is now airtight, and closing tabs from the ribbon handles failures honestly.

Fixed

• Retrying a save no longer creates duplicates. When a dropped confirmation made an add look failed and you tried again, the retry now recognizes the identical link already in place and reports success instead of adding a twin.
• The saved-link check now looks in the right place. The after-idle verification checks the exact group you picked, so an old copy of the same URL saved elsewhere can no longer mask a failed save, and a brief re-check covers the moment a save is still being written.
• Protected workspaces are no longer offered when saving a link from a web page. Picking one could silently send the link to the default workspace instead; the spotlight workspace picker now lists only writable workspaces.
• Closing a tab from the ribbon now handles failures. A tab that could not be closed reappears on the ribbon instead of staying hidden while still open, and closing the current tab proceeds cleanly even on pages where the confirmation dialog cannot be shown.

Close tabs straight from the spotlight ribbon, plus a link-saving reliability fix and Notes/Tasks button alignment polish.

Added

• Close tabs from the spotlight tabs ribbon. Every tab on the ribbon now has a close button, so you can tidy up open tabs without leaving the spotlight overlay.

Fixed

• Adding a link from a web page is now reliable after the browser has been idle. When the background service worker had gone to sleep, its confirmation could be dropped and a link looked like it failed to save even though it had. ReadyTab now verifies the link actually landed and reports success correctly.
• Notes and Tasks buttons align cleanly with the board. In their off state the buttons now line up with the shortcut grid instead of the screen edge, with consistent spacing across layouts.

Fixes for the Notes and Tasks buttons not positioning correctly around the search bar.

Fixed

• Notes and Tasks buttons now align with the search bar on first launch. On a fresh install they briefly sat in the top row instead of beside the web-search bar until the bar was toggled off and on; both now default to the same enabled state as the bar itself.
• Notes and Tasks buttons no longer disappear when the web-search bar is turned off. With the bar off they moved into the top shortcuts row, which is hidden on an empty workspace — taking the buttons with it. They are now anchored independently so they stay visible in every layout.

ReadyTab arrives on Firefox — full feature parity including the desktop companion — plus Tab Ribbon layout options and a cloud-sync diff that finally shows your Notes and Tasks.

Added

• Firefox support — ReadyTab now runs on Firefox 115+ with the same features as Chrome: workspaces, spotlight, Notes & Tasks, cloud sync, themes, and the desktop companion. Get it from the download button on readytab.cloud.
• Firefox companion — dedicated one-folder installer packages for Windows, Linux, and macOS. Folder, file, and script launchers open their windows in the foreground, working around Firefox's stricter native-host process handling on Windows.
• Tab Ribbon layout options — choose a top or left orientation for the spotlight open-tabs ribbon and optionally group tabs by domain.
• Overlay on Other Pages settings section — control the spotlight overlay on regular websites from its own settings block.

Changed

• Adding links goes through spotlight — the "Add to Start Page" context menu now opens spotlight's Add Link tab instead of the old dialog.
• Tab Ribbon is opt-in — enable it in the new split Tab Ribbon settings; matching tabs are highlighted while you search.

Fixed

• The cloud-sync diff now includes Notes and Tasks — reviewing a push, pull, or version restore lists changed notes and task lists per workspace (with task-count deltas), instead of claiming "no differences" when only off-grid content changed. Protected workspaces show an opaque "changed" row; snapshots from before the feature no longer read as deletions.
• The sync diff dialog is fully translated in all 10 languages, and the language picker no longer shows a raw language_auto key as its first option.
• Spotlight saved-link results — the drop indicator and the add-to-group button work correctly again.
• Companion (Windows) — folder launchers now open paths containing spaces correctly, and installer-written manifests are BOM-free so Firefox accepts them.

New Notes and Tasks hubs with cloud sync, an open-tabs ribbon in spotlight, and an extension-wide reliability and security hardening pass.

Added

• Notes hub — an off-grid Markdown notes space for each workspace, opened from the pen button beside the search bar, with live write / split / preview modes and per-theme styling. Notes inherit their workspace's protection.
• Tasks hub — one modal that gathers every to-do in the active workspace: standalone lists alongside mirrors of any board group's to-do items, each with a progress bar, search, quick-add, and clear-completed.
• Spotlight open-tabs ribbon — your open tabs now appear above the spotlight overlay so you can filter and switch between them, plus an opt-in right-drag zig-zag gesture to open spotlight.
• Cloud sync for Notes & Tasks — global notes and to-do lists now sync across your devices alongside your workspaces.

Changed

• Inline list titles in the Tasks hub — creating a list focuses its title field inline instead of a browser prompt, and pressing Enter jumps straight to adding tasks; the separate "All tasks" view was removed.
• The settings drawer closes on Escape.
• Per-workspace backgrounds are now free rather than a Pro feature.

Fixed

• Extension-wide hardening — a source-of-truth review closed data-loss, security, and sync gaps: ciphertext is now the sole truth for protected workspaces, workspace state flows through a single persistence and storage-change path, and cloud-sync pushes run in the service worker.
• Bookmark-folder import applies favicons when importing from the settings tab.
• Cloud sync coerces numeric fields correctly on round-trip and polls for freshness more resiliently.
• Public-board reader strips on* / javascript: attributes from the root SVG.
• Notes no longer render an extra trailing margin inside blockquotes.

ReadyTab now speaks 10 languages — the entire interface is translated, with an in-app language switcher that overrides your browser's default.

Added

• Multilanguage support — the full extension UI is now available in English, German, Spanish, French, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Brazilian Portuguese, Russian, and Simplified Chinese. ReadyTab follows your browser language by default, or you can pick a language yourself in Settings.
• In-app language override — the chosen language also applies to content-script UI, the right-click "Add to ReadyTab" context menu, and the public-board reader, not just the new-tab page.

Changed

• Localized throughout — settings help popovers, auto-sync status hints, gradient and shadow preset names, search-result type badges, routine step-kind labels, and the shared-boards modal are all translated rather than English-only.

Fixed

• Routine run-progress toast — even padding, aligned to the same spacing as the action buttons, and correctly offset past the scrollbar so the right and bottom gaps match (only when a scrollbar is actually present).

One-click Routines — chain a set of actions and run them with a single click — plus To-do lists as their own board element and a batch of settings polish.

Added

• Routines — save an ordered list of steps and run them all with one click: open URLs, launch apps, copy text to the clipboard, switch workspaces, wait a set time, and (with the companion app) open files or folders. A live progress toast shows each step as it runs.
• Two placements — drop a Routine as a top-level button on the board or as an item inside a group, and convert freely between the two from the overflow menu.
• Steps editor with "Add from board" — reorder steps by dragging, set a delay between steps, and turn links, clipboard buttons, and launchers you already have into steps without retyping.
• To-do list element — add a to-do list directly from the add-elements picker (its own element alongside Group), each with its own checklist preview.

Changed

• To-do lists are their own element — creating one no longer means adding a Group and flipping a "Group type" dropdown; pick To-do list in the picker.
• Settings open tidy — the settings drawer now opens with every collapsible card collapsed, instead of remembering what was left open.

Fixed

• Editing an item no longer hits the wrong one — fixed a positioning bug that could replace or duplicate the wrong item when a group's items lacked saved order; order now self-heals.
• Settings spacing — spacing between the General-tab icon-action buttons and around the logo upload row.
• Aurora-glass theme — routine buttons are now visible.

A Search & Spotlight redesign: Spotlight gains a quick-launch shortcut rail and Search / Add-Link tabs, on-page results now match the dashboard, and icon handling got smarter.

Added

• Spotlight shortcut rail — your top-zone shortcuts appear as one-click launch buttons at the top of Spotlight, each with a per-kind icon. Toggle it from General → "Show shortcuts" (on by default).
• Search / Add Link tabs in Spotlight — switch between searching and adding a new link without leaving the overlay.
• Cross-workspace search pills — search results show which workspace(s) each link lives in, with group / shortcut labels.
• Light & dark Spotlight skin — pick the on-page Spotlight appearance from a new General setting (dark by default).
• Smarter icons — automatic favicon fetch in edit mode, bulk icon actions, and favicons on new-tab shortcuts.

Changed

• On-page Spotlight matches the dashboard — results use the same row layout and anatomy as dashboard search.
• Refined Spotlight visuals — darker accent with white button text, a wrapping shortcut rail instead of horizontal scrolling, and add-link inputs that match the dashboard fields.
• Search type button now shows an icon only, slightly larger.
• Tidier URL matching — search de-duplicates results across www/trailing slash variants.

Fixed

• Brave context menu — the "Add to Start Page" menu is now created only on lifecycle events, fixing duplicate / missing entries on Brave.
• Legacy shortcuts in the rail — top-zone shortcuts saved before zones existed now appear correctly, and all shortcut kinds are shown.

A focused follow-up: small theming additions plus a round of board, grid, and Pro-gating fixes.

Added

• Adjustable clock size in the theme editor.
• "Shortcut background" theme variable (--link-button-bg) is now exposed in the theme editor.
• Non-Pro info note in Spaces explaining that share and publish are Pro features.

Changed

• Uniform settings spacing — section headings now use a consistent 2rem of spacing aligned across every settings tab.
• Midnight theme — removed the blue button glow inside the settings drawer.

Fixed

• Importing a shared workspace is always free — removed an incorrect Pro gate on import.
• No more repeated managed-board 403s — stale or non-entitled license keys no longer trigger looping GET /managed-boards failures.
• Drag-and-drop into empty groups works again — quick-fill CTAs are restored, and items dropped at the top of an empty group now land above the CTAs.
• Background "Reset to default" now uses the current theme's background.

A large visual and customization release: the whole UI was unified onto one theming system, the theme editor gained real depth, and board management was consolidated and redesigned.

Added

• Theme editor — box-shadow elevation presets (Theme default · None · Subtle (paper) · Medium · Strong · Glow) with a live preview, so card and surface shadows can be changed without writing CSS.
• More customizable theme variables — completed the Clock group (greeting colour, date/greeting opacity, clock shadow), an accent-hover colour, and a new "Top Bar Buttons" group for the Settings and New buttons.
• URL-first link cards with automatic Open Graph enrichment (title, description, and preview image fetched from the entered URL).
• Independent greeting toggle, with the greeting colour matching the clock colour per theme.
• Public board reader: a clear liability disclaimer, an abuse-report link, and a link to the Terms on every published board page.

Changed

• Major visual redesign — all 13 built-in themes were unified onto a single CSS-variable contract, so every surface (cards, links, tabs, clock, search, menus, modals, to-dos, empty states) is consistently theme-aware.
• Redesigned Design tab in settings — background options now live in collapsible cards, "Copy from workspace" sits under Theme, sections have clearer spacing, and "Reset to default" is an inline button on the Background heading.
• Board management consolidated into Spaces — managed-board publishing now happens in a dedicated Manage modal (alongside Shared/Published), and publishing an update requires a diff confirmation first.
• Redesigned cloud-sync diff viewer — kind-aware, grouped into Add / Change / Remove so it's clear what a sync will do.
• Per-theme polish across board-sharing and upgrade modals, workspace tabs, to-do items, and empty-workspace states.
• Groups auto-grow and auto-shrink when items are dragged between groups or deleted, keeping layouts tidy.

Fixed

• Theme-editor colour pickers now show the correct colour for gradient-valued variables (e.g. the Midnight card background) instead of falling back to grey.
• Favicon handling on bookmark import; the new-tab background is now theme-aware.
• Group menus and add-element popovers flip into view when they would otherwise run off-screen.
• Numerous per-theme readability and contrast fixes (empty states, web-search dropdown, menus on glass/dark themes, and more).