My browser is the first thing I open and the last thing I close. Everything I use for work runs in it. It made sense to put a morning information check in the browser itself instead of checking five different apps.
Here is what my current Firefox setup looks like for morning context.
Weather and Clock on the new tab
The first new tab of the day shows a live weather reading and clock. Temperature, conditions, local time.
I do not check a weather app. I do not check my phone. The information is there when Firefox opens.
Stock market data alongside it
I have a habit of checking the same handful of symbols every morning. Opening a brokerage app, signing in, waiting for the dashboard to load — it was 60 seconds for 10 seconds of information.
The stock market extension replaces one of my new tabs with a ticker. AAPL, MSFT, the S&P 500 index, a couple of ETFs. Current price, day change. That is all I need in the first 5 minutes of the morning.
Stock Market and Finance Dashboard
News headlines
Same problem as stocks: opening a news site means opening a homepage full of ads and algorithmically ranked content. The News Widget extension shows RSS headlines directly on a new tab. I subscribe to the sources I want. The headlines are there without opening the sites.
Task list for the day
The last thing before I start work is setting my priorities for the day. The Daily Planner extension replaces another new tab with a drag-and-drop task list. I write the 3-5 things I need to do today and order them.
This is on the new tab so it is impossible to ignore.
Why browser-native works
Each of these is a tool that:
- Loads in under a second (no account to authenticate against)
- Requires no app switching (it is already in the browser)
- Stores no data on a server (all local)
The morning information check used to involve opening 4-5 apps. Now it is 4 new tabs in Firefox that I would open anyway.
These are four of 11 Firefox extensions I built — all free, no-account, no-server. See the full series for the others.
