Pinodock — Everything, from your new tab.

🚀 Getting started

1. 1
   Install from the Chrome Web Store. Click "Add to Chrome" on the Pinodock listing. Chrome will confirm the permissions it needs.
2. 2
   Open a new tab. Pinodock replaces Chrome's default new tab page immediately. You'll see the first-run welcome screen.
3. 3
   Choose your mode. Pick Ambient for a quiet clock, launcher, and dock; Standard for the everyday dashboard; or Pro for the full power workspace. You can change this later in Settings.
4. 4
   Start typing to search. The launcher is always focused on load. Type anything — URLs, commands, bookmarks, tabs, or web search keywords — to get started.

⌨️ Launcher & commands

The launcher bar is the heart of Pinodock. It works like a command palette — start typing and it searches across bookmarks, open tabs, history, built-in commands, snippets, and your web search shortcuts at once.

Navigation prefixes

AI commands (Gemini Nano)

These commands run entirely on-device using Chrome's built-in Gemini Nano model (Chrome 127+). No API key, no internet, no data sent anywhere.

Developer & productivity tools

Quick-action commands

Web search shortcuts & URL aliases

Pinodock ships with built-in web search keywords such as gh, yt, mdn, and npm. Type the keyword followed by a space and a search term — e.g. npm react searches npm for React. Slash form works too: /npm react.

Create and manage your own in Settings → Shortcuts → Web Search Shortcuts. Use {query} in the URL for substitution — e.g. keyword jira with URL https://yourco.atlassian.net/issues/?jql=text~"{query}" lets you type jira MAD-1234 to search your workspace.

⌨️ Keyboard shortcuts

Launcher

Navigation tabs

Todos

🗂️ Dashboards

Pinodock supports multiple named dashboards. Each dashboard has its own plugin set, layout preset, and widget visibility. Switch between them using the pill buttons at the top of the home screen or with Ctrl+Alt+] / Ctrl+Alt+[.

Dashboard templates

In Settings → Dashboard → Dashboard templates you'll find one-click starter configurations for common personas. Applying a template creates a new dashboard with pre-selected widgets — you can customise it immediately afterwards.

Adding a blank dashboard

1. 1
   Click the + button next to the dashboard pills on the home screen.
2. 2
   Type a name and press Add.
3. 3
   Go to Settings → Plugins to enable plugins for the new dashboard.

Layout presets

• Compact (3-col) — 3-column grid. Best for 4+ small widgets.
• Balanced (2-col) — 2-column grid. Best for most use cases.
• Spacious (single) — Full-width single column. Best for rich widgets like Calendar or Todoist.

🔌 Plugins

Plugins add live data widgets to your dashboard. There are two types:

• Live plugins — call public APIs directly. No auth, no setup. (Hacker News, Crypto Prices, Reddit Feed)
• Connected plugins — read from a tab you have open in another window. No OAuth, no API keys — just keep the relevant site open. (Spotify, Gmail, Google Calendar, YouTube Studio, AWS Console, GitHub, Todoist)

Enabling a plugin

1. 1
   Open Settings → Plugins from the top navigation.
2. 2
   Click Add on the plugin you want. It will appear as a widget on the active dashboard.
3. 3
   For connected plugins (Gmail, GitHub, Spotify, etc.), the widget shows a "Grant access" button on first use. Click it — Chrome will show a one-time native permission dialog. This is the only moment Pinodock requests host access for that site.
4. 4
   After granting, open the relevant service in any Chrome tab (e.g. mail.google.com for Gmail). Return to your new tab — the widget populates within seconds.

⚡ Custom plugins

Beyond the built-in plugins, you can write any JavaScript snippet that fetches data and returns it as a dashboard widget. Custom plugins run in a sandboxed iframe — they can call fetch() but cannot touch chrome.* APIs, your storage, or your open tabs.

Writing your first plugin

Go to Settings → Plugins → Custom (Advanced) and click + Add custom plugin. The editor accepts any async JavaScript. Return either a plain string or a { title, items } object:

// Returns a key-value table widget
const res = await fetch('https://open.er-api.com/v6/latest/USD')
const data = await res.json()
return {
  title: 'FX rates',
  items: [
    { label: 'EUR', value: data.rates.EUR.toFixed(4) },
    { label: 'GBP', value: data.rates.GBP.toFixed(4) },
  ]
}

Return format

• Plain string — displayed as a single text paragraph in the widget.
• { title, items: [{label, value}] } — rendered as a labelled table with a title header.
• { title, text } — title plus a body paragraph.

Useful public APIs (no key needed)

For a full gallery of copy-paste examples, see the Custom Plugins section on the Plugins page →

✅ Todos

The Todos tab is a lightweight task manager with projects, priorities, due dates, and recurring tasks — all stored locally.

Features

• Projects — group todos into named lists. Create a new project with the + button in the sidebar.
• Priority flags — High (red), Medium (orange), Low (grey). Set via the flag icon on each todo.
• Due dates — click the calendar icon on a todo. Overdue items are highlighted automatically.
• Subtasks — expand a todo to add nested sub-items.
• Recurring todos — set a task to repeat daily, weekly, or monthly. It resets automatically on completion.
• Drag to reorder — drag the handle on any todo to change its position.

🔥 Habit tracker

Track daily habits with a streak-based visual calendar. Every habit shows a heat map of the past 90 days.

Creating a habit

1. 1
   Open the Habits tab from the top navigation.
2. 2
   Click + New habit. Give it a name and choose an emoji icon.
3. 3
   Set the target frequency — daily (default), weekdays only, or a specific number of days per week.
4. 4
   Check it off each day with a single click.

Reading the calendar

• Each square is one day. Filled squares = completed. Empty squares = missed.
• The streak counter shows your current unbroken run and all-time best.
• Hover any square to see the date and completion note.

🍅 Pomodoro timer

The Pomodoro widget lives in the bottom-left corner of every new tab and persists across navigation. It survives tab switches and fires a desktop notification when the session ends.

How to use it

• Click the tomato icon at the bottom-left to expand the timer.
• Press Start to begin a 25-minute work session.
• After the session, a 5-minute short break starts automatically.
• After 4 pomodoros, a 15-minute long break is suggested.

Customisation

Change session durations in Settings → Productivity. You can set work sessions from 5 to 60 minutes, short breaks from 1 to 15 minutes, and long breaks from 10 to 45 minutes.

📋 Snippets

Snippets are reusable text templates you can paste anywhere with a short trigger name. They're saved in chrome.storage.sync by default so they follow you across devices.

Creating a snippet

1. 1
   Open the Snippets tab from the navigation bar.
2. 2
   Click + New snippet. Give it a short trigger name (e.g. sig) and the full body text.
3. 3
   Save it.

Using a snippet

In the launcher, type /snip sig (replace sig with your trigger name). The snippet body is copied to your clipboard and a confirmation toast appears. Paste it anywhere with Cmd+V.

⚙️ Settings reference

Appearance

• Theme — Dark (default) or Light.
• Accent colour — eight presets or a custom colour picker.
• Font size — Small, Medium (default), Large.
• Layout preset — Compact / Balanced / Spacious for the plugin widget grid.
• Focus mode — hides all navigation and widgets, leaving only the clock and launcher.
• Background photo — four source options:
  • Daily — a free landscape from Picsum Photos, changes daily. Use ↻ New image on the home screen to shuffle.
  • Unsplash — random photo by topic (landscape, space, city, etc.) via the Unsplash API. Requires your free API key from unsplash.com/developers.
  • Custom URL — paste any direct https:// image link.
  • Local file — upload from your device. Compressed to 1280px JPEG and stored only on your machine.
• Daily quote — toggle the inspirational quote below the launcher.

Dashboard

• User name — adds a personalised time-of-day greeting above the launcher.
• Workspace mode — Ambient keeps the clock, launcher, and dock; Standard shows the everyday dashboard; Pro enables the full power workspace.
• Weather widget — shows current conditions in the bottom-right corner. Leave city blank to auto-detect.
• Timezone — IANA timezone string used for /time and world clock display (e.g. Europe/London).
• Search history — shows your recent launcher searches when the input is empty.
• Clipboard history — enable /clip to access your last 50 copied items.
• Pomodoro work duration — set work session length from 10 to 60 minutes via the slider.

Plugins

• Enable/disable individual plugins per dashboard from Settings → Plugins.
• Subreddit — configure which subreddit the Reddit Feed plugin reads from.
• Custom plugins — write JavaScript snippets that fetch data and render as dashboard widgets. Code runs in an isolated sandboxed frame with no access to extension APIs.

Shortcuts

• Web Search Shortcuts — add Alfred-style launcher searches such as docs cache api or /docs cache api. Each shortcut uses a keyword and a URL pattern containing {query}.
• URL aliases — save direct jumps to sites, dashboards, docs, or environments you open often.

Data

• Usage tracking — opt in to track personal productivity metrics (searches, todos, pomodoros). Stored locally, never sent anywhere.
• Export backup — downloads all Pinodock data (todos, habits, snippets, settings, aliases) as a JSON file.
• Import backup — restores from a previously exported JSON backup file.
• Firebase Analytics — opt-in anonymous donation click events only. Disabled by default.

🔒 Privacy & your data

All Pinodock data — todos, habits, clipboard history, plugin cache — lives in your browser's local storage. Nothing is sent to PencilCard's servers because PencilCard has no servers.

• Uninstalling the extension removes all data automatically.
• Export your data at any time: Settings → Data → Export.
• Plugin data is cached for 5 minutes then overwritten on next refresh.

Read the full privacy policy →