igHome was a free, iGoogle-style personal dashboard — a search box, your Google-service links, and a page of gadgets, all in one place — that a lot of people moved to after iGoogle shut down in 2013. Since October 1, 2026, the site has been a news page with no sign-in. If you're looking for an igHome alternative, you've probably been with it a while. Maybe you came to igHome years ago when Google shut down iGoogle, and it gave you back that familiar home base. And maybe this week you opened your browser and found a different page waiting.

This guide is an honest look at the best igHome alternatives in 2026 — what each one is actually good at, and how to figure out which is the right move for you. We'll start with the option built for the "open my browser and everything's already there" use case, then cover the real choices in the iGoogle-successor space so you can pick by fit, not by whoever shows up first. (For the whole category, not just iGoogle successors, see our roundup of the best personal homepage apps in 2026.)

What changed on October 1, and how to rebuild your setup

Since October 1, 2026, igHome's site has been a single news page: a search box, a row of topic tabs, and a fixed set of headline feeds. When we checked on October 2, there was no way to sign in, add your own links, or set up gadgets, and the test setup we had made there in September no longer appeared. The site doesn't say what happened to existing setups or whether they can be brought back.

If igHome was your home base, here's how to rebuild it:

  1. Start from your browser's history. The sites you opened from igHome every day are probably still in your browser's history. Search it by site name and keep the ones you still use.
  2. Check your bookmarks. If you saved your igHome links into a browser folder before October 1, that folder is your list. Your browser can save it as a standard bookmarks file.
  3. List your feeds. For each news or RSS gadget you used to read, write down the site it came from. Feeds don't carry over as links, so they belong in a feed reader.

If you're moving to Abunch, a bookmarks file is enough. Import it from Settings: you'll see a preview first, Abunch tells you which links it skipped (feed links, addresses that aren't web pages, and blank entries), and if the file is larger than your plan allows, nothing comes in until you leave some folders out. You can also skip the file and add the sites you open every day one at a time. Paste an address and Abunch fills in what it can, including the icon, name, and a short description. Abunch doesn't read RSS feeds, so the list from step 3 belongs in a feed reader.

First, what igHome got right

It's worth being fair, because igHome filled a real gap.

igHome launched in 2012 as a near-clone of iGoogle, and when Google retired iGoogle in late 2013, it became a soft landing for people who didn't want to lose their setup. It mimicked the iGoogle layout: a central search box, a row of Google-service links across the top, and a page of gadgets — weather, news, RSS feeds, a clock, calendar, and more — that you arranged yourself. You could split things across multiple tabs and import RSS feeds. It was free, it worked across devices, and for more than a decade it did one important thing for a lot of people: it kept the iGoogle feeling alive.

If what you miss most is that classic widget dashboard — your news, weather, and feeds on your homepage next to your links — the widget dashboards further down this guide are the closest thing to it now.

If it's iGoogle itself you miss rather than igHome, we wrote a guide on which part of iGoogle to replace and with what.

The people who were already looking for an alternative usually hit one of a few walls.

Why people look for an igHome alternative

The biggest reason is recent. Since October 1, 2026, igHome's site has been a news page with no sign-in, so anyone who started the day from an igHome setup now needs somewhere else to start.

Even before that, people were already looking, for a few reasons that came up again and again:

It was barely maintained. The front end ran on libraries from 2012, the built-in support widget failed to load, and the homepage went months at a time without a single change. For a page you open every day, that was an uneasy place to be.

Gadgets broke. In long-time-user reviews, the most common complaint was reliability: gadgets that stopped working or disappeared, custom content that vanished between sessions.

The dashboard was dense by design. The whole iGoogle/igHome model put more on the page — feeds, widgets, modules, all competing for attention. Plenty of people loved that once and don't anymore. They've realized they rarely read the homepage news feed; they just want their actual sites, fast.

The look was dated. A faithful iGoogle clone in 2026 looked like a faithful iGoogle clone in 2026. For some that was nostalgia; for others it was the cue to move on.

If you're here, it helps to get specific about what you're really replacing. There are two different things people mean by "I want my iGoogle back," and they point to different tools.

What to look for in an igHome alternative

Before the list, here's a quick way to narrow it down:

  • The gadgets, or the home base? Be honest about which part of iGoogle you actually used. If it was the live widgets — weather, news, RSS on the page — you want a widget dashboard. If it was really just "my sites and a search box, one place, every device," you want a clean personal homepage. These are different products.
  • Calm vs. dense. Some tools minimize to just your links; others maximize information on screen. Pick the one that matches how your brain works at 9am.
  • Maintained vs. frozen. The lesson of igHome is that "free and still online" isn't the same as "looked after." Check whether the tool is actually being developed.
  • Setup cost. Starting from a blank page is the silent killer of homepage tools. The best ones give you a head start — templates or copyable collections — so you're useful in minutes, not after an hour of dragging widgets.
  • Portability. Can you export your data and leave whenever you want? You should never feel locked in again.

The best igHome alternatives in 2026

1. Abunch — best for a clean daily homepage

Abunch is built around a single idea: your daily sites at a glance, plus a bunch to explore when you need more. Instead of a page of gadgets and feeds, it gives you your most-used sites, organized into categories, as the page your browser opens to. It's a personal homepage first — not an information dashboard.

The piece that sets it apart is the Daily + Occasional split. You get two desktops: one for the sites you actually open every day, kept deliberately clean, and one for everything else — the sites you use hard for a stretch and then not at all (buying a car, filing your taxes, planning a trip), plus the references you want to keep but rarely open. (That second space is also where the new tools you mean to try later end up — keeping up with new AI tools is its own problem.) This is the part that answers the old iGoogle problem directly: igHome's instinct was to pile everything onto one page until it got noisy. Abunch's is to separate "daily" from "the rest," so your morning view never fills up. You're not keeping fewer sites — your daily desktop just surfaces the ones you actually use day to day, and everything else stays one click away. If you've ever pushed more than the 10 shortcuts Chrome gives you, you already know the browser's default runs out long before your list does.

The other thing that solves the blank-page problem is Explore. You can browse dozens of curated collections — ready-made sets of links for a topic, hand-picked for quality — and copy one to your own homepage in a click. A new user can go from empty to a useful, organized homepage in about half a minute, which is exactly where most homepage tools lose people.

What it's honestly not: Abunch is focused. There are no RSS feeds, no weather widget, no news gadgets, no built-in notes or to-do lists — and that's a deliberate bet, not a missing checkbox. A widget is a preview; the thing you actually act on lives on the site itself. For anything you'll click into anyway, a widget is just a slower link — so Abunch puts its effort into getting you to the site fast instead of rendering a sliver of it on the page. The honest exception is glanceable status you never click through — weather at a glance, headlines you only skim. If that's the part of iGoogle you loved most, you'll miss it here, and the widget dashboards below do it better. Abunch is for the opposite: less on the page, faster to what you actually open.

  • Free: collection browsing and one-click copy, cross-device sync, use Abunch as your browser homepage. No ads.
  • Standard: the Daily + Occasional dual desktop and a much larger capacity.

Abunch is new. Export is on every plan, including the free one, so you can try it with your real set and take it back out if it isn't for you.

Best for: anyone who wants a calm, maintained homepage that opens to their daily sites — and a fast way to get set up without building from a blank page.

2. Protopage — best if you actually want the gadget dashboard

If the part of iGoogle you genuinely miss is the widgets — feeds, weather, modules arranged on one page — then Protopage is the closest surviving relative. It leans into the same RSS-feeds-plus-widgets model that igHome was built on, and it keeps the multi-tab "Work / Personal / News" dashboard feel that iGoogle users will recognize. Worth knowing before you settle in: Netvibes, for years the best-known page in this genre, retired its consumer service in June 2025, and My Yahoo closed the same year. This is a genre that has been shrinking. You won't escape density here either — but if you like density, Protopage is where it still lives.

Best for: people who want the live-widget dashboard experience, kept up to date.

3. Start.me — best for a feed-and-widget command center

Start.me is the polished, modern take on the dashboard model. It does drag-and-drop bookmarks plus widgets — RSS news, weather, notes, to-do lists — and power users build a genuine command center out of it. The free plan is limited to three pages and shows ads; the PRO upgrade ($25/year as of July 2026) removes ads and unlocks the full widget set. If you want the richest, best-supported version of "everything on one page," it's hard to beat.

Best for: people who want a dense, well-built dashboard and don't mind paying to remove ads.

4. Symbaloo — best for a visual tile grid

Symbaloo organizes links as a grid of colorful tiles ("webmixes"), each with its own icon. It's been around a long time, it's popular in classrooms, and the visual, icon-driven layout is easy for almost anyone to grasp — not far in spirit from iGoogle's friendliness. The trade-off is structure: tiles rearrange freely, but there's no real folder hierarchy, so large collections can get unwieldy.

Best for: people (and teachers) who want a simple, recognizable visual board over deep organization.

5. A self-hosted start page — best if you'll never trust the cloud again

If the igHome experience taught you not to depend on a service you don't control, self-hosted start pages (the kind that run on your own server) give you total ownership and zero third-party exposure. The cost is real: you maintain it, you back it up, and there's no one to call when it breaks. Most people don't want that job — but if control is non-negotiable, this is the path.

Best for: self-hosters who value control over convenience.

Quick comparison

Best at Free tier Paid from Still actively developed?
Abunch Clean daily homepage Collections, sync, no ads — see pricing for current limits $2.49/mo ($19.90/yr) Yes
Protopage Widget dashboard Yes Ad-free upgrade Yes
Start.me Feed/widget command center 3 pages, ads $25/yr (PRO, as of July 2026) Yes
Symbaloo Visual tile grid Yes Paid tier Yes

Pricing, tiers, and service status change — confirm on each provider's site before deciding.

How to move off igHome

igHome no longer has personal pages to copy from, so a move is a rebuild. The good news is it's faster than it sounds:

  1. Write down what you actually use. Go through the rebuild steps at the top of this guide and keep only the sites you genuinely open — not the ones that sat on your page since 2014. This list is usually shorter than you'd expect, and it's the real thing you're recreating.
  2. Get a head start instead of a blank page. With Abunch specifically, browse Explore, copy a ready-made collection close to your topic, and you're already most of the way there. Add the rest of your sites by hand — it's quick once the structure exists.
  3. Point your browser at it. Make the new tool the page your browser opens on startup, so it's there before you think about it. (In Chrome: Settings → On startup → Open a specific page.)
  4. Give it a week. Use the new setup for a week and move things around until it matches how you start your day.

The bottom line

igHome did something good: for more than a decade, it kept the iGoogle feeling alive for people who weren't ready to let go.

If you're here because the page you started your day from changed under you, it's worth asking what you really wanted from iGoogle in the first place. If the answer is the live widget dashboard, Protopage or Start.me keeps you in that world. If the answer is simpler — your sites, organized, opening the moment you launch your browser, kept calm and actually looked after — that's the gap Abunch is built for, with a Daily/Occasional split to keep your morning view clean and copyable collections so you're set up in seconds.

The honest version: don't replace one frozen dashboard with another. Pick the tool whose default screen matches the thing you actually do first when you open your browser.

Ready for a calmer homepage? Try Abunch →