Repositioning “Most Visited” List in Google Chrome?

Question

Is it possible to manually re-position/re-arrange the list of "Most Visited" Web Sites list visible whenever you open a new tab in Google Crome?

Here's a Screenshot:

I use Windows 7 Home Premium.

Answer 1

The file describing the pinned urls is here:

%USERPROFILE%\Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default\Preferences

This is a json file and can be edited with any text/programming editor eg jEdit, notepad ie it does not need a SQLite browser. It has a section in it that typically looks like this:

"ntp": {  
      "pinned_urls": {  
         "http://www.advfn.com/": 0,  
         "http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/": 1,  
         "http://www.amazon.co.uk/": 2  
      },

So to change it, all you need to do is close all Chrome windows, then edit this section to change the URL, or the number attached (which is the display order) to what you want. Make sure you don't change the syntax - commas, colons, quotes etc as above! Start Chrome up again and it should reflect your updated preferences. Sometimes it takes a while to find a thumbnail - be patient, it always sorts itself out eventually.

Answer 2

Unlike app icons, most visited places can't be rearranged, unless you open the Top Places SQLite file and edit them manually.

Update:

So as mentioned, if you open the Top Places file(found at %localappdata%\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default) using a SQLite database browser like this tool, you can edit the url_rank column of thumbnails table which governs the order in which the thumbnails are displayed.

From my system, this is how the the current tab order is:

You can see that Hacker News is at #3. Ask Ubuntu is down at #8. Now, after bumping up the url_rank to 2, you can see that Ask Ubuntu tab moves up.

Not too hard to create a program which can display the order, and change it to whatever you want.

An alternative is to try the Speed Dial extension, it allows for custom websites to placed on New Tab page screen.