Blanksmith

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Keep your tab bar calm. 🌱

Open the links that belong here in this tab. Keep a fresh tab for somewhere genuinely new.

Blanksmith is a small Chrome extension for a big tab-bar problem: websites that open every target="_blank" link in another tab. On sites you choose, it keeps same-property links right where you are—without taking away the new tabs that are actually useful.

No accounts. No telemetry. No extension-initiated network requests. No bundled site list. Your browser, your rules.

Ready? Go. ✨

1. Visit the noisy site

Open a site where same-site links keep bouncing you into new tabs.

2. Tap the Blanksmith icon

Choose Include this site, then approve Chrome's permission prompt for that site.

3. Keep browsing

Same-property _blank links now open in your current tab. A destination that Blanksmith classifies as a different property keeps its new-tab behavior. Small change. Calmer browsing. 🎉

Put the rules in your hands 🎯

You choose	Blanksmith does
Included sites only (the default)	Works only on sites you explicitly include.
All sites except excluded	Works everywhere, except the sites you exclude.
Same property (the default boundary)	Keeps same-property links in the current tab and preserves new tabs for different properties.
Related domains	Lets you explicitly say that another domain belongs to the same product.
Convert all (advanced)	Opens all matching _blank links in the current tab—including different-property destinations. Use it only when that is what you want.

Rules begin empty. There are no hidden presets. In Settings, each rule can cover a whole site or one hostname, and you can switch between the safe default and the advanced behavior whenever you need to.

These clicks stay yours 🛡️

Blanksmith deliberately leaves these alone:

• Cmd/Ctrl/Shift-clicks and middle-clicks
• download links
• links marked rel="external"
• every link on a site you have not enabled

It never rewrites the page's target attribute. When a rule permits a conversion, it uses preventDefault() plus normal browser navigation (location.assign()) at click time.

Private by design

• No developer-operated backend, analytics, ads, remote code, or extension-initiated fetch, XHR, or WebSocket requests.
• Only your rules and preferences are stored in chrome.storage.sync. On an enabled page, it reads only the clicked link details needed for that one decision—not page text, forms, cookies, or your browsing history.

Read the details in Privacy and Security.

Honest little asterisks

• "Same property" normally means the same registrable domain (eTLD+1), calculated locally with a Public Suffix List parser that recognizes private suffixes. It cannot prove common ownership across different domains; related domains are always your explicit choice.
• Multi-tenant hosts such as github.io stay separate by default. Use the same-host boundary when that is safer.
• Version 1 handles effective _blank links on anchors and image-map areas, including <base target="_blank">. It does not intercept window.open, forms, frames, or closed shadow roots.

Install from source

The Chrome Web Store listing is not published yet. To use Blanksmith today:

pnpm install
pnpm build

Then open chrome://extensions, enable Developer mode, click Load unpacked, and select .output/chrome-mv3/. Pin the icon—and give your tab bar some breathing room.

Building, testing, and contributing

pnpm verify       # test, typecheck, build, and verify Store artwork
pnpm assets:store # regenerate deterministic Store and social images

Read CONTRIBUTING.md before contributing. The complete rule model, manual Chrome checks, and Store materials live in MANUAL_TEST.md, STORE_LISTING.md, and store-assets/README.md.

Have a bug or a bright idea? Open a GitHub issue—just leave personal browsing data and credentials out of it.

License

MIT © 2026 TiantianFlow