How to Make Chrome Shortcuts on Your Windows Desktop

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Man using Chrome on laptop

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by Scott Orgera
Scott Orgera has been a tech journalist since 2007. He has 25+ years' experience as a programmer and QA leader and several Microsoft certifications.
Updated March 09, 2019

Google Chrome makes it easy to open shortcuts to websites from the bookmarks bar, but did you know that you can also create shortcuts to your favorite websites by adding them to your desktop or to a folder on your computer?

How to Create Chrome Shortcuts on Your Desktop

When you create a shortcut to a web page, the shortcut opens the web page in a standalone window without any menus, tabs, or other browser components. A Chrome shortcut can also be configured to open as a standard web page in a new browser tab since the standalone window option isn't available in all versions of Windows.

  1. Open the Chrome web browser and go to a web page.

  2. Go to the Chrome menu, located in the upper right-hand corner of the browser and represented by three vertically aligned dots.

  3. Select More tools and choose either Add to desktop, Create shortcut, or Create application shortcuts (the option you see depends on your operating system).

    screenshot showing More Tools

  4. Type a name for the shortcut or leave the default name, which is the title of the web page.

    Create Shortcut screenshot

  5. Select Create to add the shortcut to your desktop.

More Information on Creating Chrome Shortcuts

The above method isn't the only way to make shortcuts that open in Chrome. Here are some other ways to create a shortcut to a web page:

Create a Shortcut in a Folder

  1. Highlight a URL in the address bar.
  2. Drag the link to a folder on your computer.

Create a Shortcut on the Desktop

  1. Right-click the desktop, go to New, and select Shortcut.
  2. Enter the URL and select Next.
  3. Type a name for the shortcut and select Finish.

Create a Shortcut on the Taskbar

  1. Select a shortcut on the desktop.
  2. Drag the shortcut to the Windows taskbar.

If none of these methods open the link in Chrome, change the default browser in Windows.