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
   Set your name and theme. The welcome overlay takes 30 seconds. You can skip it and change everything later in Settings.
4. 4
   Start typing to search. The launcher is always focused on load. Type anything — URLs, commands, bookmarks, tabs — 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, and all built-in commands 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

URL aliases & shortcuts

Pinodock ships with 40+ built-in aliases: gh → GitHub, yt → YouTube, mdn → MDN docs, npm → npmjs.com, and many more. Type the alias followed by a space and a search term — e.g. npm react searches npm for React.

Create your own in Settings → Shortcuts. Use {query} in the URL for substitution — e.g. prefix jira with URL https://yourco.atlassian.net/browse/{query} lets you type jira MAD-1234 to jump straight to that ticket.

⌨️ Keyboard shortcuts

Launcher

Navigation tabs

Todos

🗂️ Dashboards

Pinodock supports up to 6 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.

Preset dashboards

• Work 💼 — Google Calendar, Gmail, GitHub, Todoist in a 2-column layout. Quick Links and Scratch Pad on. Pomodoro on.
• Creator 🎬 — YouTube Studio, Spotify, Reddit. Quote widget on. Quick Links on.
• Developer ⌨️ — GitHub, Hacker News, AWS Console, Crypto Prices in compact 3-column. Quick Links and Scratch Pad on.
• Personal 🌿 — Spotify, Crypto, Reddit in a single spacious column. Quote on. Scratch Pad on.

Adding a custom 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.
4. 4
   The layout preset defaults to Balanced. Change it in Settings → Dashboard.

Layout presets

• Compact — 3-column grid. Best for 4+ small widgets (Dev dashboard).
• Balanced — 2-column grid. Best for most use cases.
• Spacious — 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.
• 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.

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 →