I like to have a row of favorite Web site icons on my Desktop so I can double-click and jump to those sites. I use Chrome and for some reason they’re not working. Help!
Good timing: It was just a few days ago I wrote about how to create, manage and update your bookmarks within Google Chrome itself! What you’re doing is even more old school for most users, actually taking up desktop real estate for individual shortcut files so you can jump to favorite Web sites easily. Still, it’s still definitely a supported feature in Mac, Windows and even Linux systems, and it’s supported across basically all Web browsers at this point too, so let’s figure out what’s going on!
My first thought is that the web bookmark shortcuts (whatever the heck they’re called) are completely reliant on what your default Web browser is set to: They aren’t actually associated with the browser that created them, in other words, but are just generic Web URLs for specific pages or sites on the Web. Set your default to something that can’t interpret them and, well, it ain’t going to be much happy at all!
But let’s start with how you create these simple shortcuts. I’ve jumped to Bing News and searched for news about Microsoft. In Google Chrome. Fortunately the universe hasn’t imploded 🙂
Look closely at the titlebar and the cursor: I’m in the midst of dragging the site’s URL onto the Desktop to create a shortcut. Since sites now have a lock icon shown next to their actual address (to the left of “https://”) it’s that icon you want to drag to the Desktop. A tiny bit confusing. Still, drag it anywhere that Windows controls the space and you’ll instantly have a shortcut appear:
Now, what do you notice about this shortcut? Even though I dragged the address out of a Chrome browser, Windows has turned it into a Microsoft Edge shortcut. That’s why the “e” shows up!
Sure enough, double click on it and Microsoft Edge pops up with this particular page pre-loaded:
To switch the shortcut to work with Google Chrome instead, you’re going to have to ensure that Chrome is the default Web browser on your Windows 10 (win10) system!
Back in Chrome, that’s done by clicking or tapping on the “•••” link on the top right, then choosing “Settings” from the subsequent menu. Scroll down just a bit and you’ll find this:
Because Win10 is more protective of your settings (finally!) you’ll find that this opens up the default apps Control Panel. Make the change there, close that window, and you’re done. Fixed.
Now if you double click on the shortcut you should end up here:
Still not working? The only other possibility I can think is that you have some odd settings getting in the way of things. To try and fix that, go back into Settings from the “•••” menu, then find this set of choices:
If you have “Open a specific page or set of pages” it’s possible that could get in the way of the web shortcuts working, so try choosing something else, like “Open the New Tab page”, quit Chrome, then try double clicking that shortcut on your desktop again. Hopefully that gets it all working!
Pro Tip: I have hundreds of Windows tutorials and help pages on the site. Please take the time to check ’em out!
In Firefox any suggested methods do not work; I’ve tried them all.
A manual workaround using Edge was found on the internet and is as follows:
%windir%\explorer.exe microsoft-edge:URL
where URL is the page you want to reach.
You put this in a standard windows shortcut create request.
I have a related problem that Microsoft Community has given up on trying to solve.
In Chrome, the ‘Create Shortcut’ in More Tools is greyed out. No matter which method I use to create an internet shortcut from Firefox, Chrome, Internet Explorer and Edge, the thing that ends up on the desktop, when double-clicked, opens a Print dialog window. Can you help ?