Brave-browser: [Desktop] Be able to edit and add "top sites" shown on the Dashboard (new tab page)

[Xyncgas]

[HubDanDevMan]

Can you specify what the problem is? And do you mean with Top Site? Do you mean warez FTP servers or do you mean a startpage you made?

[Xyncgas]

let me elaborate.

By top sites I mean the ones that displays during brave's start page, like when you click a new tap or from starting the browsers, now brave puts those sites that you most frequently visits as those little icons like a short cut that you can pin or remove, which I found much useful.

one day I unpinned one, and by accident, and it's gone like south park, and usually there is something that says you can undo if you delete the top sites, it wasn't showing up, so by accident it was gone, and sometimes in december I had this issue with deleting too, the confirmation wasn't showing up, and right after I deleted it by accident while using touch screen, and it's gone. I wish I could edit these short cuts so I can have the freedom to add anysite I want and manage their address etc...... Instead of being stucked to them forever (when you have a lots browsing, don't forget these are the sites that you most frequently visits, so for other sites you want it to be there, I feel like more time is needed to visit them everday in order for them to show up at the start page, which the fact that you got to spam visiting them to get it to the start page is annoying) and no way to get them back after deleting them

[bsclifton]

@Xyncgas thanks for the detailed description; this is something that @cezaraugusto is currently working on 😄 I couldn't find an existing issue for this feature request, so we can use this one

Here's a quick prototype interface that @cezaraugusto put together in a demo. @karenkliu I believe is working on the actual design with @rebron

• Besides having a way to add them (ex: the "+" tile), it would be good to be able to edit ones being shown.
• If a top site is deleted by pressing the X in top right, can there be a better way to restore one single site? For example, maybe a "top sites recycle bin" that can be shown, letting user restore one specific site instead of having to restore ALL of them

[Shudouken]

I would like to see this feature implented as well.
By default the top sites link to the base url for a website, but for youtube I'd like to edit it to take me to my subscriptions feed instead.
Also it's not really clear to me how these top sites are chosen. It would be nice if I could turn that off as well and only add my own sites.
The prototype above looks great!

[CaptainSiberia13]

I agree that this feature needs to be a priority. I just started using Brave as it was recommended by a friend. I like the browser, but miss the speed-dial on my old "Opera" browser. Adding that sort of home page functionality would be great!

[rwilliams]

This new tab plugin has some killer features along these lines. Editable favorites, adjustable rows, columns. Folders for favorites and pages similar to iOS and Android.

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/infinity-new-tab-pro/nnnkddnnlpamobajfibfdgfnbcnkgngh

I was using this in the past but now that we're getting paid to look at the new tab page it'd be nice to have more features.

[Vantiveman]

I agree completely with the above. The ability to edit/add/change number of top sites would be extremely useful. It's annoying when one that I'm sure was pinned (as I pin all six, which seems to be the max) was suddenly replaced by another site that I had just used.
The layout/positioning/number of top sites should all be configurable options. It this is already being worked on as seems to be the case - Great! and thank you. I'm having a great experience with Brave, but this one aspect is a bit of a spoiler.

[Xyncgas]

let's make our browser to an operating system...
wait WHOOA GOOGLE ?
We can't just use extensions though, it's essential and gotta be open source and staying alive, I mean it'd really makes me feel the freedom if I get to laugh at people how they are stuck in their home page

[rwilliams]

We get paid money to use this new tab page. It would be nice if it has some of the features that many new tab page extensions have. We're just talking about editable favorites here.

[finseiz]

We need this!!!! almost 8 months since this issue was created

[Xyncgas]

I totally think I can write codes, only if there's a way for me to get my hands on the dirt and make things change, I would really wanna do it and now I am still not even one foot in the doorway for writing patches for open source projects I've gotta start doing it

[water-chip]

I made an account just so I could post in this thread. This is so ridiculous. Could you PLEASE add this extremely basic function to Brave already? It's been EIGHT MONTHS since this thread started. What tf is this, internet explorer 8? It's starting to feel that way. Get your sh** together, ffs.

[shunting65]

How about a choice in history, to add this entry as a top site? No doubt someone has navigated to a site they are interested in.

[landshrk]

Adding my voice to the cries for this feature to be implemented, almost 9 months after the original request was submitted. This can't be that hard, right?

[aaronsantamaria]

+1 Community
https://community.brave.com/t/make-top-sites-list-editable/166484

[MaxiM-PL]

+1

So much time has passed since this issue was raised and the New Tab "dashboard" is stil completely useless. Even pinned "Top Sites" unpin themselves and disappear whenever they feel like it. It's a mess.

[aaronsantamaria]

+1 Community
https://community.brave.com/t/ability-to-customize-the-new-tab-dashboard/171032

[douglasparker]

+1, why has such basic functionality not been implemented yet?

[bsclifton]

Grabbing this one next - just need to wrap up work on something else first 😄 This should be trivial after I landed the refactoring work with https://github.com/brave/brave-core/pull/6584. Stay tuned!

[douglasparker]

Grabbing this one next - just need to wrap up work on something else first 😄 This should be trivial after I landed the refactoring work with brave/brave-core#6584. Stay tuned!

This is great news, thank you!

[aaronsantamaria]

+2
https://community.brave.com/t/unable-to-edit-shortcuts-top-sites/181172/2

[aaronsantamaria]

+2
https://community.brave.com/t/we-need-to-be-able-to-add-custom-top-sites/181107

[SXMacdara]

This issue has been raised in multiple threads under different names... Usually around top sites disappearing pr pinned sites not staying pinned. I see your team has removed the pin functionality. That seems a step backward. @bsclifton showed a nice prototype from @cezaraugusto almost a year ago. Can the Brave team or whoever is working on this give us ANY estimate as to when this will be completed? Why is it taking so long to add this feature?

[MaxiM-PL]

This should be trivial after I landed the refactoring work...

Umm, so I'm not going crazy and the pin was disabled completely. SO what happened to "This should be trivial"? Now it's even worse than it was before o_O

[douglasparker]

This should be trivial after I landed the refactoring work...

Umm, so I'm not going crazy and the pin was disabled completely. SO what happened to "This should be trivial"? Now it's even worse than it was before o_O

That is a very good question. 🤔

[bsclifton]

Explanation incoming - I know it can be frustrating ☹️ Hoping you all can hang in there as we make progress

The pinning logic we had was all custom written on top of Chromium and was seeded with information coming from the chrome.topSites API. This code mostly worked but always seemed to be plagued with issues- including sites that would seemingly disappear at random (we got a LOT of reports for this)

When 1.17 shipped, the functionality has technically regressed from user POV. There is no pinning, but the behavior matches Chromium exactly (which doesn't have pinning either). We only (at the moment) expose the "most visited sites" mode. There is a "my shortcuts" mode and it does actually work - but we haven't had time to start work on this yet, unfortunately

Here's a work-around you can do if you're wanting to add/edit/move top sites in the meantime:

1. Visit brave://new-tab-page
2. In the bottom right, click Customize (pencil icon)
3. Click Shortcuts in left side of modal presented
4. Pick My shortcuts
   
5. Click done
6. On the Chromium new tab page, click the + to add the sites you want

After you do this, the Brave NTP will work as you expect. You can change the order of the sites, the ones you added will show here. When I was reworking this code, it seemed far better to re-use all of the Chromium logic rather than try to re-invent the top sites wheel. Unfortunately, it was a pretty large scope change (you can see the implementation with https://github.com/brave/brave-core/pull/6584) and I wasn't able to get everything in one go

We chose to temporarily disable the My shortcuts mode because it's possible to get into a situation where you can delete all your entries and there isn't (at the moment) a + icon to add entries back. When we grab this issue (add/edit top sites) we can re-enable this mode since there will be a way for folks to re-add sites manually

The remaining work is trivial to do - it's just a matter of prioritizing the work. I'll raise this with product and see if we can expedite work here

[douglasparker]

Thanks for the update @bsclifton. Hopefully we'll see the situation improve in the near future.