Chrome is one of the most popular web browsers on the internet, thanks to its large variety of features. Many people around the world use it as it can translate any web page into the language of their choice, which is quite practical. One of the functional elements is that it provides you with the most visited pages links, directly from your homepage. But what if you don’t want them, or you’d prefer different ones? Here is how to modify this feature.
Privacy Matters
By default, Chrome will automatically store in its history the pages you visit and will place direct links to the most popular ones on your homepage. The goal is to save you time searching for them, since it is clear that they are your favourite ones, as you go back to them on a regular basis.
That is all great when you are by yourself at home, but what if you are in a café and the person sitting beside you starts looking up your shoulder to see what pages are your favourites? The same is true about work. You have the right to privacy, and your colleagues don’t need to know your personal interests. Here is how you can remove these links from your home page.
How to Remove a Website Link from Your Homepage
Every time you will open a new home page, Google will bring you links to the pages you visited most recently. It updates it every once in a while, so you can have access to the ones you prefer at present time. To remove these links, there are a couple of ways to go about it. The easiest and most obvious one is by placing your cursor over the image of the link. Three dots will appear on the right corner of the image. If you click on them, a box will open, providing you with an option to delete the link. Click on it and it will disappear.
Another way to proceed is by clearing your browser history. For Chrome to supply you with links to most visited websites, it needs to find out which ones they are. It uses your history of browsing to select the most visited ones. If you clear your history, then Chrome will consider that you haven’t visited any website and will therefore be unable to select and show links on your home page. To do so, click on the icon at the upper-right corner of the browser. Once the options open-up, select “History” followed by “Clear Browsing Data” and this should solve the situation.
If you want to get rid of these links forever, you can download an app called “Chrome extension New Tab Redirect.” This will let Chrome know that every time you open a home page, it should be empty of any redirecting links. Go to “Options” in the mobile app and it will let you create a customized launch URL. All you’ll have to do is type “about:blank”, and you’ll never have any links again appearing on your home page.
How to Add a Website Link to Your Homepage
One way to add a new link to your home page is by deleting the ones that are already there. You then have to follow the steps we’ve mentioned previously which are clicking on the three dots on the image and then “delete.” As you take one out, a new one will appear. Chances are, if you do go often enough to the link you are looking for, it will appear quick. But you can proceed like this, deleting them one by one, until you finally see the link you want to appear.
Another way to proceed is to drag and drop a thumbnail onto the home page. To do so, you go into your “Most Visited” page and grab them from there. It will then be up to you to choose which ones stay and which ones go.
There is no other way to add a website link to your homepage. But to make it easy to find a page on your browser, you can also bookmark it. You will just have to open your bookmarked list of websites and click on the one you want to access.
What if Your Home Page Does Not Provide You with Links to the Most Visited Websites?
It is possible that your Chrome home page does not provide you access to your favourites through direct links. That would be a problem caused by your current settings of Chrome. It probably means that you have chosen, in the past, for Chrome not to keep a history of the websites you visit. Here is how to return to normal settings.
First, click on the upper-right corner of the menu and then select “Settings.” There you will find an “Advanced” option, which is the one you must choose. Move on to “Content Settings” and then “Cookies.” In that section, look up for “Keep local date only until you quit your browser” and make sure it is not turned on. Afterwards, Chrome should be able to keep history of your roaming and provide you with the most visited web pages links.
