Background Tab for NewsBlur

Name: Background Tab for NewsBlur
Rating: 4.6 (10 reviews)
Author: Darryl Tam

Opens the active item in a background tab when the user presses a customizable hotkeys (default: 'o' and 'v') in NewsBlur.

As of May 2026, Background Tab for NewsBlur has 228 users and a 4.60/5 rating from 10 reviews in the News & Weather category.

Darryl Tam News & Weather

Chrome Web Store ↗.crx

Users−1.7%

228

Rating0%

4.60

10 reviews

Reviews0%

Version

0.5.0

Manifest V3

History

2 snapshots

Tracking since Apr 28, 2026.

View as table

Date	Users	Rating	Reviews	Version
Apr 28, 2026	232	4.60	10	0.5.0
May 25, 2026	247	4.60	10	0.5.0
Now	228	4.60	10	0.5.0

Permissions & access

Permissions: storage
Host access: http://www.newsblur.com/*, https://www.newsblur.com/*, http://newsblur.com/*, https://newsblur.com/*, http://beta.newsblur.com/*, https://beta.newsblur.com/*

Screenshots

Background Tab for NewsBlur screenshot 1

About

This extension allows you to open a link in a background tab by pressing a customizable hotkey (default 'o' or 'v').  This feature used to work without an extension, but it broke starting with Chrome 41.

Be sure to reload the NewsBlur page after installing or changing the hotkey(s).

Source code is available at: https://github.com/Lyrrad/NewsBlurBackgroundTab

What's new?

0.5.0:

Migrate to Manifest V3.
Known issue: Customized hotkeys not working.  It should still work with the default "o" and "v" hotkeys. Pull requests or suggestions welcome.

0.4.1:

Add support for beta.newsblur.com (Thanks to David Edwards)
Migrated from deprecated chrome.extension to chrome.runtime (Thanks to Jefferson Scher)

0.4.0:

Able to override Newsblur hotkeys (New default "o" and "v"). (Thanks to Gary Pandergast)
Added support for multiple hotkeys.
Changed to local storage instead of using Chrome Sync to store extension settings.  Settings from 0.3.0 will be lost.

0.3.0:

Support for customizable hotkey.  Default is ";".
Bug fixes.

0.2.4:

Minor bug fixes.

0.2.3: 
- New tabs should now open next to the current tab.
- Fix issues with key capture on certain overlays.