What Chrome’s “new tab page third party” means, and how to fix it

Updated 18 October 2026

chrome://new-tab-page-third-party is a plain new tab page built into Chrome. Chrome shows it when your default search engine isn’t Google and doesn’t have a new tab page of its own. It’s part of Chrome and harmless. To get Google’s new tab back, make Google your default search engine again.

What’s on it

The third-party page is deliberately bare: up to 8 tiles of your most visited sites in the middle of the screen, in your theme’s colors. There’s no search box, no Google logo, no Customize Chrome button and no My shortcuts. You can remove a tile with its X, and that’s all.

Why Chrome shows it

Every new tab starts at chrome://newtab, and Chrome then picks a page based on your setup:

So if you chose another search engine on purpose, the page is doing its job. Google’s help says the same from the other side: customizing the New Tab page requires Google as your default search engine.

Get Google’s new tab page back

1. Click the three-dot menu, then Settings, then Search engine.
2. Under Search engine, click Change and pick Google.
3. Open a new tab. The Google search box and Customize Chrome should be back.

If it switches back, or you never changed it

Then something else changed your search engine. Work through these in order:

1. Look for an extension in control. In Settings, a box reading “An extension, [name], is controlling this setting” names it. Remove that extension in chrome://extensions, and the settings it changed go back to how they were.
2. Check for policies. Open chrome://policy. On a personal computer, policies you don’t recognize can come from unwanted software.
3. Uninstall programs you don’t recognize in Windows (Settings > Apps > Installed apps) or in your Mac’s Applications folder.
4. Reset Chrome: Settings > Reset settings > Restore settings to their original defaults > Reset settings.

Our guide to a new tab page that changed by itself walks through each step.

Keep your search engine and get a better new tab

You don’t have to go back to Google to get a more useful new tab. An extension’s new tab page looks the same whatever your search engine is. Stackboard puts a board of your own bookmarks there, and the address bar keeps searching with DuckDuckGo, Bing or whichever engine you picked.