When sophomore Sricharan Sanakkayala heard students would be receiving Chromebooks for school use this year, he got the idea to create a chrome extension. ‘Legacy New Tab’ shows users a different background every time a new tab is opened, along with a search tab, a weather display, and shortcuts to Google Maps, music, and a to-do list.

“I started a few months back, and it was just a background image and I thought it would be cool if I could put it on a Chromebook because I heard that they would just be plain and boring,” said Sanakkayala.

To install the extension, students would need to go to the chrome web store from their Chromebook (this extension will work on other devices as well) and look up ‘Legacy New Tab’. The first result to appear, ‘Legacy New Tab by Pixovex’, is Sanakkayala’s product.

The project, which was started in the beginning of August, was approved by the school board on Monday last week. Sanakkayala, who worked on the project by himself and was not funded, elaborated on why ‘Legacy New Tab’ is a better option for students.

“It’s simply much faster and has a cleaner user interface and it’s specifically being built for students, so I would assume that it’s much better for day-to-day usability,” Sanakkayala said.