Wallpaper and background selector
The background is the one thing on the page you can’t avoid looking at, and it decides whether everything else is readable. Not technically a widget. It’s the surface the widgets sit on, but choosing it well matters more than any single widget you add.
Eight ways to set a background
Eight tabs. Curated collections, a wallpaper library, Unsplash search, GIF search, an image address, upload, solid colour, and your favourites.
Genuinely different choices rather than eight routes to the same place. Search gives you variety and a page you enjoy opening. An upload gives you something personal no rotation can take away. A solid colour gives you maximum legibility and minimum distraction, and it’s where experienced users end up once the page becomes a work tool.
Backgrounds can be video too. An mp4 or webm plays behind the widgets. It’s the most striking thing the extension does and the most expensive, so think twice on a laptop.
Automatic rotation
Backgrounds rotate at an interval you pick, six hours by default, and "don’t change" is one of the options. The trade-off: any text without a shadow or fill behind it will eventually land on an image that swallows it.
If you rotate, style your text defensively once and stop thinking about it. If you want exact control, pick one image and leave it alone.
Images are requested at your screen size and pixel density, so backgrounds don’t arrive soft on a scaled display.
Favourites and going back
Like an image and it lands in a favourites tab, safe from the next rotation. Over time that becomes a personal collection filtered by one useful criterion, these are the images your widgets look good on. The like is also a vote. It feeds back into what gets shown to everyone.
There’s a back button too. Rotation occasionally carries off something you liked before you thought to keep it; the last ten are still there.
Seasonal sets are bundled — Christmas, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Birthday, so a holiday page is a two-minute job rather than an image hunt.
Choosing a background your widgets survive
Simple test: your text sits in the upper third and the centre, so the image needs to be quiet there. A busy sky is lovely behind nothing and terrible behind a countdown.
Dark image, light text is the most forgiving combination. Light images need darker text and usually a translucent panel from the figure widget underneath.
Wallpaper & Background settings
- Sources — Collections, wallpaper library, Unsplash search, GIF search, image URL, upload, solid colour, favourites.
- Video backgrounds — An mp4 or webm plays behind the widgets.
- Auto-change — A rotation interval from the picker, six hours by default, or fixed to one image.
- Favourites and history — Like an image to keep it; step back through the last ten backgrounds.
- Seasonal collections — Christmas, Halloween, Thanksgiving and Birthday sets.
- Per workspace — Each workspace has its own background.
What people use it for
- Rotating photography for a page you just enjoy opening.
- One fixed personal photo behind a minimal layout.
- A solid colour for maximum legibility on a work dashboard.
- Seasonal backgrounds for a holiday countdown page.
- A looping video behind a page you leave on a second monitor.
The wallpaper & background widget is part of New Tab Studio — free to install, no account needed to start.
Add to ChromeQuestions about the wallpaper & background widget
Can I use my own photo?
Yes. Upload it and it becomes the background. The file stays on your machine, which also means it doesn’t travel with a theme you publish.
Can different workspaces have different backgrounds?
Yes. Wallpaper is stored per workspace, which is part of why workspaces feel like separate pages rather than filtered views.
Will an animated background drain my battery?
It costs more than a static image, and it repaints every time you open a tab. On a laptop, a still photo is the safer choice.
My text became unreadable after the wallpaper changed. What do I do?
Fix it on the widget, not the wallpaper. There is no dimming or blur in the background picker itself; instead each widget has a text shadow checkbox, a translucent fill and a background blur that frosts the image underneath. Any of the three survives every future rotation.