Allow web extensions to add a small widget/gadget to Firefox View and/or the New Tab page to quickly view information or perform actions. For example, a weather add-on could show the current weather, a calendar add-on could show the user's next appointment and an ad blocker could show the number of ads blocked in the current session and overall. Firefox Lightbeam could show statistics for the top third party trackers the user encountered, while extensions like Flagfox or Server Status could show the top countries the user connected to.

Extensions could of course already provide this functionality with an action popup or extension page for example, but there is not currently any way for the user to see this information for multiple add-ons at once in a convenient dashboard like Firefox View. Most operating systems already allow applications to create some form of widgets, but there is no comparable UI for web extensions, which would also make cross platform widgets possible. Firefox for Android of course itself has a widget, which allows the user to perform searches without opening their browser.

My idea is to allow extension developers to optionally add a key to their manifest.json file to specify an HTML file to show for the widget. It would then automatically be added to either Firefox View or the New Tab page, but the user would of course be able to remove it at any time. They also would be able to rearrange their add-on widgets and potentially resize them. I would be happy to make a more concrete proposal if anyone is interested.

Adding to Backlog for review/consideration

This is a great idea. I'd be curious to better understand the potential impact of this to the UI.

Opening this enhancement.