On Debian 13 with GNOME, if you want Chromium to open a new tab with a local webpage (or a page that does not require an internet connection) instead of https://duckduckgo.com, you can adjust Chromium's startup behavior.
Open Chromium.
Go to:
textchrome://settings/onStartup
Under "On startup," select:
file:///path/to/your/local_page.html)If you want a blank page, use:
textchrome://newtab
or simply about:blank in the address bar.
If you want to enforce this change system-wide or for all profiles, you can edit Chromium's preferences file:
Close Chromium.
Open the preferences file:
bashnano ~/.config/chromium/Default/Preferences
(Replace ~/.config/chromium/ with the correct path if you use a different profile or Chromium variant.)
Search for:
json"homepage": "https://duckduckgo.com", "startup_urls": ["https://duckduckgo.com"],
and replace them with:
json"homepage": "about:blank", "startup_urls": ["about:blank"],
or your local file path (e.g., "file:///path/to/your/local_page.html").
Save the file and restart Chromium.
You can also launch Chromium with a command-line argument to open a specific page:
bashchromium --new-window "about:blank"
or
bashchromium --new-window "file:///path/to/your/local_page.html"
Would you like help creating a local HTML file for testing? Or do you want to enforce this setting system-wide?