Change Chrome New Tab Page to local file

Question

All of the extensions that allow you to change the the new tab page to a local file leave the cursor at the end of the URL, meaning that every time I open a new tab I now need to type ⌘T and ⌘A.

I would either like the URL bar to be blank or for all the text to be selected like in Firefox so that I can simply start typing.

Answer 1

There is no way to do this besides creating your own extension (see question comments for details). As it turns out, creating your own extension to do so is incredibly easy.

1. Create a new folder
2. Place the HTML file you want to load in your new tab inside it. Mine is called new-tab.html

3. Create another file in the folder called manifest.json that looks like this:

   {
     "name": "My custom new tab page",
     "description": "Overrides the new tab page",
     "version": "0.1",
     "incognito": "split",
     "chrome_url_overrides": {
       "newtab": "new-tab.html"
     },
     "manifest_version": 2
   }
   

4. Go to chrome://extensions and click the Developer mode checkbox on the top right.

5. Click the Load unpacked extension… button

6. Navigate to your folder and click select