Quickly Launch Websites & Shortcuts Using Text Macros

Launch websites using text macros

Is the visible portion of your bookmarks bar full? If you’re unable to visit websites directly from the bookmarks bar or just not a fan of it, here’s a quick trick to launch websites & shortcuts using text macros. While Google Chrome doesn’t really have text expansion functionality, it’s possible to use Chrome’s search engine settings to achieve this result.

Visit Websites Quickly by Setting Custom Keywords

If you’re a bit lost and don’t know what a text macro is, it’s essentially an abbreviation which when recognized by a software performs a particular task. In this case, a small abbreviation can easily be used to launch websites with lengthy URLs.

For example, let’s take this website Gtricks.

The goal is to launch the URL http://www.gtricks.com by setting a keyword phrase. It can be anything and in this case, let’s go with the keyword gts.

How to Launch URLs using Custom Keywords & Phrases

Step 1: Right-click the Chrome address bar & select Edit Search Engines. This will open Chrome’s search engine settings which are primarily used for setting a Chrome’s default search engine.

Launch Websites & Shortcuts Using Text Macros

Launch search engine settings

Step 2: Once you’re in the window, scroll down to the bottom of Other search engines. Here you’ll see boxes for entering three parameters.

Search engine settings

Step 3: These are the three parameters:

Add a new search engine: This is where you enter the name of the website you wish to launch. If it’s our website, name it Gtricks.
Keyword: It’s the abbreviation used to launch the website. Here it’s gts.
URL with %s in place of query: The URL of the website goes in here. Let’s put http://gtricks.com

Scroll down to see three blank boxes

Here’s how it looks after entering the values

After typing in the parameters press enter to save or click the Finished button.

Step 4: Once the change is reflected, type the keyword in the address bar and hit enter. It should work as intended.

Launch websites using text macros

How to Launch Chrome Shortcuts using Custom Keywords & Phrases

We already know how to create bookmarks for shortcuts like Chrome history, extensions & settings pages. The same URLs can be used with Chrome’s Search Engines feature to launch shortcuts like settings by repeating the same steps.

Here’s an example where the keyword sts is used to launch Chrome settings.

Enter other URLs like Chrome shortcuts

Launch settings using a keyword

Conclusion

Using search engine settings is a pretty nice little hack to launch websites & shortcuts using text macros. For more tips & tricks like this visit our Chrome page.