How to Add Websites as Apps in Google Chrome

The default start page of Google Chrome, that you see when you create a new tab, has two sections.  The “most visited” section contains thumbnails of websites that you visit more often while the other section has shortcuts to web apps that you have installed from the Chrome Web Store.

The “most visited” list is auto-generated based on your browsing history but you can quickly add any of your favorite website to the “apps” section even if that site is not officially available as an installable app in the Chrome Store.

There are two ways of doing this. You can either drag a website thumbnails from the “Most Visited” section to the “Apps” section of Chrome and make that site available as an app. Or you may open a site in a separate tab and drag the site’s favicon to the Apps section as shown in the video below.

Install any Website as a Chrome App

Once the website is available as an app inside Chrome, you can quickly launch the site from the Apps section itself without installing any extensions. The only limitation is that Chrome won’t generate any thumbnail images for these self-created apps.

Amit Agarwal

Amit Agarwal

Google Developer Expert, Google Cloud Champion

Amit Agarwal is a Google Developer Expert in Google Workspace and Google Apps Script. He holds an engineering degree in Computer Science (I.I.T.) and is the first professional blogger in India.

Amit has developed several popular Google add-ons including Mail Merge for Gmail and Document Studio. Read more on Lifehacker and YourStory

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