How To Turn Any Website Into A Desktop App With Google Chrome

Although there are millions of websites on the Internet, as a trader you probably only use a dozen (maybe even less) per day. These websites are your go-to sites. If you’re anything like me, there are three to five sites you use all day long. You might have one for news, one for deep analysis of charts, and maybe a membership site you belong to.

How could you access these sites more easily? I got so fed up with loading the same sites over and over, I decided to find out if there was an easier way. It turns out there is.

In today’s video I want to show you how to use Google Chrome to transform any webpage that you frequent into an app.

Why would you do this as a trader?

In the video below you can see in my Taskbar that I have many applications. Some of these are websites I refer to often. As my software brokerage platform, I open TradeStation every day. I go to EZBreakouts.com a bunch of times each day. I also use Investor Business Daily to check the market direction, analyze charts, and come up with my Top 10 Daily Stocks list for EZBreakouts. These are just a few of the websites I use constantly.

There is a hidden feature in Google Chrome to transform any webpage into an application.

Using this feature you can switch apps super fast. If your web page is transformed into an app you’ll be able to use your keyboard to switch between open apps. To do this use the “ALT” and “TAB” keys together. If you press the alt key and the tab key you can cycle through open windows.

Without leaving your keyboard, without touching your mouse, you could switch to investors.com and then right back to TradeStation. Without this tip you’d wind up using your mouse to click around way more than you have to.

How Create An App Out of Your Trading Websites With Google Chrome:

If you follow the steps outlined here, you can use this trick with any website or webpage: news research sites, stock charting sites, software brokerage platforms.

Here are the steps:

  1. In Google Chrome, go to the three dashed lines in the upper right corner below the red X, right of the address bar.
  2. Click on the bars. Mouse down to “more tools”.
  3. Once the next submenu comes up, mouse down to the menu item “Add to Taskbar”.
  4. Next, you’ll get a little icon that represents the website you were on.
  5. Rename it to whatever you’d like.
  6. Check the box that reads “open as new window” (you might not already have it checked).

Two things will have happened as a result of the above steps. You now have the website as an application in your Taskbar and as a Google App in your Chrome browser.

Close Google Chrome. Click your new icon in the Taskbar to see if it works.

One final tip…You can create three types of short cuts with your webpage app.

  • Desktop
  • Start Menu
  • Taskbar

To create these short cuts do the following:

  1. Open Google Chrome.
  2. Mouse over to the left area of Google Chrome.
  3. Click on the icon that says “Apps”.
  4. Navigate to the web app icon that you created.
  5. Right click on the icon for the web app you created.
  6. Choose “Create shortcut”.
  7. A dialog box appears.
  8. In the dialog box choose whether you want a Desktop, Start Menu, or Taskbar shortcut. You can also choose all of the above. (Any shortcuts you’ve already created will be preselected in this dialog box).

The next time that you go to your Desktop, Start Menu, or Taskbar the icon you create for your website app will appear. Pretty cool, huh!

To remove your “apps”, do the following:

  1. Open Google Chrome.
  2. Mouse over to the left area of Google Chrome.
  3. Click on the icon that says “Apps”.
  4. Navigate to the web app icon you want to remove.
  5. Right click on the icon for the web apps want to remove.
  6. Choose “Remove”.

Google will automatically remove your Desktop, Start Menu, and Taskbar short cuts all at once.

There are more trading computer tips like this in our buyers guide. Check out our “How To Buy a Trading Computer” e-book.

We hope today’s Quick Tip helped you. You can always call us if you have questions: 800-387-5250