A Simple Method to Convert Any Link to a Chrome App

Applications are one of the most intuitive utility on Google Chrome. They can be launched as separate windows or pinned to your taskbar for quicker access. However, not all services have their apps in Chrome’s web store. Thankfully, there’s a neat way to convert any link to a Chrome app.

Make a Chrome App For Any Website

#. First of all, head over to the website you want on your app launcher. Once that’s done, load the apps window and place it side by side the website’s tab. Take a look at the image below for a better understanding. (You can access all Chrome apps from Apps icon in bookmarks bar or from chrome://apps/ URL)

#. Now, select the site link from the address bar and drag and drop it on the applications window. Once you release the mouse, there will be a new app with the particular website’s address as the name along with its favicon. That’s it, the custom window link has been added to other installed apps.

#. You can create shortcuts for this link directly now and also customize whether it should launch in a tab or a separate window. To do so, right-click the link icon and tap “Create shortcuts” to get a shortcut on your desktop. Tap the “App Info” to personalize the launching behavior.

#. From the desktop, you can then pin it to Start or Windows taskbar by right clicking on the shortcut and selecting the appropriate option.

This will definitely help if you visit a website often and need to load it multiple times a day. It will use the favicon as the icon, however, in most cases it will be of low resolution and won’t look attractive. We would recommend using a different icon and change it from the properties menu.

Advantages of using Chrome App from a site over a Bookmark

Chrome Apps gives you the same experience as a native app, they run as a separate process and can exist without opening Chrome browser. What we have created here is a hosted Chrome app, which is essentially a wrapper on a site. With packaged chrome app, you can have resource files within the app so it loads quickly and can run without internet connection. Nonetheless, creating an app from dragging and dropping a URL will provide you same experience as a traditional desktop application.

We have used Gtricks as example in above screenshots, but consider Gmail or Facebook or your favorite browser game as separate app. They won’t be having distractions like omnibar(address bar) or new tabs.

And if you don’t want a separate Chrome app, you can use any site in new tab Chrome launcher.

That was all for this article, let us know if we missed something or you’re stuck at a step.