Perfect Home is a Firefox and Chrome extension that lists your bookmarks as speed-dials in new tabs

Ashwin
Apr 23, 2021
Firefox, Google Chrome
|
9

Speed Dials are a must-have feature for me in any browser that I use. While I prefer Group Speed Dial for my regular usage, I often jump through other add-ons every month or so to test them.

Perfect Home is a Firefox and Chrome extension that lists your bookmarks as speed-dials in new tabs

That's how I landed with my current choice, Perfect Home. This is not your usual speed dial add-on, in that you can't add dials on your new tab page directly. Rather, Perfect Home uses your browser's bookmarks folders and displays them like speed dials. It's not the first add-on to do so.

The extension lists your bookmark folders, as well as web shortcuts that you have in the main folder. By default, this should be the Bookmarks Menu directory, but you can set a custom main folder from the add-on's settings.

Perfect Home edit dial

Clicking on a folder in Perfect Home's interface lists its contents, and selecting a shortcut takes you to the corresponding web-page, just as a bookmark should. Right-click on a dial to open it in a new tab, background tab, new window,  and copy the URL.

Perfect Home right-click menu

Browsing through folders is a bit cumbersome,  and kind of the opposite of what a speed-dial does. So I'd suggest adding your favorite sites to the primary Bookmarks folder or Docked Folders, which I'll explain in a bit, this will allow you to access them much faster. If you don't want to clutter the folder with many shortcuts, you can use the plugin's built-in search function to find a specific site.

Perfect Home search

You can edit a bookmark's dial, and enter a different title and URL. You can also set a custom thumbnail from a file or the web. But you can't change the bookmark's location, i.e. move it to a different location. This is a limitation in the browser, so you'll need to use Firefox's bookmark manager for modifying the shortcuts.

Perfect Home Docked Folders

Let's take a look at Perfect Home's settings, click on the gear cog button in the top-right corner, and a menu should appear. We have already seen what the main folder setting is for, the next option is Docked Folders.

Perfect Home settings

Click on the button, and select the folder that you'd like to add. It will appear in the bottom of the window, click on it and it pops-out to list its contents.

Perfect Home Docked Folders example

Perfect Home allows you to customize the color of the background and the text, grid width, gap, tile size, width, etc. You can toggle an option to open links in a new tab. Advanced users can use a custom CSS script too.

Perfect Home theme settings

There are a couple of privacy toggles in the add-on's settings panel, enabling these options allows the add-on to fetch favicons using Google, and themes from GitHub. To switch to a different theme, head back to the Customize menu, there are just 4 themes to choose from, but you can always tweak the settings manually.

The extension has a built-in import and export tool, that you can use to back up your preferences. Want to start over? Hit the Reset button, and the settings will be reverted to the default values.

Perfect Home is an open source add-on. Download it for Firefox and Chrome. I don't like the default color of the menu and the docked folder, they are not exactly easy on the eyes.

Summary
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Software Name
Perfect Home
Operating System
Firefox, Chrome
Software Category
Productivity
Price
Free
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Comments

  1. Paul(us) said on April 24, 2021 at 10:18 pm
    Reply

    Did you install Firefox 57 or later? Do you see on the new tab a lot of unused space?
    This is how to give a sense to all blank fields?

    Then you should consider that you can add “Top sites” tiles?

    How to do it/Chosen solution:
    Find option in about:config page named browser.newtabpage.activity-stream.topSitesCount.
    For example, to me, it’s good to view 36 tiles (6×6).

    Open about:config ,browser.newtabpage.activity-stream.topSitesRows= “no of rows you want”

  2. Al CiD said on April 24, 2021 at 10:00 am
    Reply

    I´m using “Fast Dial” from FastDialDev… fast, small, with import and export, options and themes

    And, like PerfectHome, it works with custom folders inside bookmarks, so nothing is gone after deactivating this addon.

  3. Pictus said on April 24, 2021 at 9:07 am
    Reply
  4. Tommy said on April 23, 2021 at 11:17 pm
    Reply

    Personally I use FVD speed dial but had enough with them.
    The only problem is, as far as I understand, it’s impossible to export dials to another software/app/Xls.
    Does anyone get any solution for that?
    Thx.

  5. computer said no said on April 23, 2021 at 2:40 pm
    Reply

    The ability to set a custom background would be a nice addition.Humble new tab gives this function.

  6. Tom Hawack said on April 23, 2021 at 11:07 am
    Reply

    If I do appreciate and use speed dials — and I do — I nevertheless consider thse to be pertinent in that they allow quick access to given bookmarks we frequently use and which are located a bit everywhere in our bookmarks library : using speed dials to reflect this library seems to me odd.

    If I hadn’t already a speed-dial of my own I’d opt for ‘Perfect Home’ (and I didn’t wait this article to say so) after having tried it perhaps a year ago and compared to other similar extensions. But because of the way I conceive speed dials I reserved then a dedicated bookmarks folder for ‘Perfect Home’ in which I duplicated those of my bookmarks I wished to have quick access to.

    Folders and moreover sub-folders on a speed-dial page doesn’t seem ‘productive’ to me. Say you’re on a whatever page and wish to access a given bookmark : you’ll have to call the ‘New tab’ with its speed-dial, and if the bookmark you’re searching for is nested you’ll have to click on a folder, perhaps another sub-folder … when all this can be quickly done with the browser’s built-in bookmarks toolbar icon.

    As I see it speed-dials is a nice concept but only to hold selected, often used bookmarks, not folders and even less sub-folders, doesn’t make sense IMHO.

    In terms of the shortest way to access a bookmark no doubt that the Bookmarks Toolbar is the winner. To follow this logic, locating all bookmark folders on the Bookmarks Toolbar rather than in the Bookmarks Menu is the ultimate, even faster than speed dials, accessible immmdiatley from any page. This is my approach and if I nevertheless have a speed-dial page serving as both Homepage and NewTab page, it is more fto avoid a blank page than for efficiency; blank page given I totally bypass Firefox’s Home and NewTab built-in pages.

    Again this is my approach, I’m not stating implicitly that it would be the wisest, need to say but said anyway.

    1. owl said on April 25, 2021 at 10:47 am
      Reply

      I completely agree with @Tom Hawack.
      I, too, have used many Speed Dial extensions in the past, but only Speed Dial (by Mark Lumnert) continues to be used today. I like it very much because it is designed to be very simple, easy to register and manage, and behaves lightly. I am no longer interested in any other Speed Dial feature.
      Speed Dial by Mark Lumnert | addons.mozilla.org
      https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/speed-dial-lite/
      Speed Dial : Frequently Asked Questions
      https://mybrowseraddon.com/speed-dial.html

      1. owl said on April 25, 2021 at 1:03 pm
        Reply

        In case you are wondering, the Firefox native bookmark toolbar feature can be displayed in a vertical tree style by using the “Tree Style Tab” extension. Therefore, I hide the Bookmarks Toolbar, the icons of Bookmarks Menu and Library.

      2. owl said on April 25, 2021 at 1:32 pm
        Reply

        In my opinion, the Firefox-only extension “Tree Style Tab” provides the best usability (user experience) that unparalleled. This extension is the biggest motivation for me to use Firefox (Unfortunately, the latest features of Tree Style Tab are not available in Pale Moon and Basilisk).

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