Peristyle

Your personal sanctuary on the web.

A personal browser start page for Chrome and Edge. Replaces the new tab page with a clean, dark glassmorphic dashboard — your sites, search, clock, weather, and nothing else.

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Features

• Site tiles — organised into groups, drag to reorder, add/edit/delete at any time
• Live clock & date — always front and centre
• Weather widget — current conditions, feels like, wind, rain chance, and a 7-day forecast popup (powered by Open-Meteo, no API key required)
• Theming — 8 colour themes, custom accent colour, 6 font pairings, clock style options, tile opacity and blur sliders
• Backgrounds — built-in presets (including the default Peristyle image), custom image URL, pin your own images, or use the daily Bing photo automatically
• Search — configurable search engine (Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo, Ecosia, Brave); press / anywhere to focus
• Edit mode — press E or click the pencil icon; drag tiles between groups, rename groups, reorder groups
• Backup & restore — export your personal config as a config.json file and import it back on any machine
• Update checker — checks GitHub for a newer version on load; shows a badge on the settings icon when an update is available
• First-run tutorial — 8-step guided tour; can be replayed from Settings → General
• About — Settings → About explains what a peristyle is and how the name connects to the extension

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Installation

Peristyle is a sideloaded extension — it is not on the Chrome Web Store.

First time setup

1. Download the latest release as a ZIP
2. Extract the ZIP to a folder on your machine (somewhere permanent — the browser needs to keep pointing at it)
3. Open Chrome or Edge and go to chrome://extensions or edge://extensions
4. Enable Developer mode (toggle in the top-right corner)
5. Click Load unpacked and select the extracted folder
6. Open a new tab — Peristyle will appear with a set of sample tiles to get you started

Updating to a new version

When a new version is available, a small red badge will appear on the settings icon in the bottom-right corner of your new tab page.

1. Open Settings and go to the Updates tab
2. Click Download latest version — this downloads a fresh ZIP from GitHub
3. Extract the ZIP and replace the contents of your existing extension folder with the new files
4. Go to chrome://extensions and click the reload button (↺) on the Peristyle card
5. Open a new tab — done

Tip: If you store the extension folder in a synced location (OneDrive, Dropbox, etc.) you only need to update it once and all your machines will pick up the changes after a browser restart.

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Your personal config

All your settings — tiles, groups, theme, weather location — are stored in your browser's localStorage automatically as you make changes. Nothing is shared or synced anywhere.

On a fresh install, Peristyle starts with a set of built-in sample tiles. From there, set it up the way you like and use the export/import buttons to manage your own config:

• Click the download icon in the action bar (bottom-right) to save your current config as config.json
• Click the upload icon to restore a previously saved config on a new machine

Your config.json is personal — it is not included in this repository. Keep your own copy somewhere safe if you want to be able to restore your setup.

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Settings overview

Tab	What's in there
General	Peristyle name, show/hide title, search engine, link target (same or new tab), tutorial
Appearance	Colour theme, accent colour, font pairing, clock style, icon size, tile opacity & blur
Background	Built-in presets (including default Peristyle image), daily Bing photo, custom URL, pinned images
Weather	Enable widget, search for your location, save coordinates
Groups	Add, rename, reorder, and delete groups
Updates	Current version, latest version, check now, download
About	What a peristyle is, version info, GitHub link

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Keyboard shortcuts

Key	Action
/	Focus the search bar
E	Toggle edit mode
Escape	Close any open modal
→ / Enter	Next tutorial step
←	Previous tutorial step

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APIs & services used

Service	Purpose	Key required?
Open-Meteo	Weather data & geocoding	No
Bing Image of the Day	Optional daily background	No
Google Favicons	Tile icons	No
Google Fonts	Typography	No

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File structure

Peristyle/
├── manifest.json              # Extension manifest (Manifest V3)
├── peristyle.html             # Main page — markup and styles
├── peristyle.js               # All logic — state, rendering, settings, weather, updates
├── images/
│   └── peristyle-default.jpg  # Default background (AI-generated peristyle courtyard)
└── README.md

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License

GNU General Public License v3.0 — see LICENSE for details.