If you are to compose a new email message to someone, you’ll probably launch the mail program first, wait for the Inbox to load and will then hit the Compose button. That’s like 3 steps to open a blank new message.

There’s a faster way though that will completely skip the Inbox.

Go to the address bar of your web browser, type “mailto:” and hit the Enter key. The command will launch the message compose window directly in your default mail program but without loading your mailbox in the background (see GIF).

You may also include additional arguments in the mailto: command to automatically fill the various message fields.