Chrome app launcher is nine-squared icon which appears on top right when you open a new tab or any Google products. It provides quick and easy way to switch between Google products. If you are signed in Google account, you can also customize app launcher by re-arranging icons and adding more Google product shortcuts. Even though the app launcher is very useful, the downside is that it has only shortcuts for Google products. We cannot add shortcuts to third party products and our favorite pages. Additionally, the ‘add more’ option at the bottom does not contain the complete list of Google services. And at last, the launcher remains unused by many of us.
Customize Google Chrome’s App Launcher by Adding Shortcuts of Your Choice
Let’s make the app launcher of Chrome more useful by adding shortcuts of our choice. Instead of bookmarking every site you use daily, access them directly from the launcher. To do so, you need to download and install an extension called “App Launcher Customizer for Google™”. After you add the extension to your Chrome, open a new tab. Click the usual app launcher icon and find a lot more shortcuts than your regular once. Notice that at the bottom of the box, the ‘More’ option had been replaced by ‘Configure’. Follow the steps to add or create new shortcuts-
Click on the ‘Configure’ option at the bottom of the launcher. An options tab of App launcher customizer for Google will open. On the right side, you will have the list of current shortcuts available in the launcher. Drag and drop any shortcut to rearrange the queue. On the left side, you will see the list of over 250 Google services. You can add any of these to the current shortcuts by just clicking them once. To create a new shortcut, click ‘Add custom shortcut’ button on top of the current shortcuts list.
The process is very simple and in a matter of seconds you have your very own customized Google Chrome App Launcher. One thing that pins here is that you can’t change the order of the apps in the launcher box while it was possible without the extension. To do so, you need to hit configure and change the order. However, this drawback does not effect much when we have other options to customize your launcher. You can even suggest a new Google shortcut if the Google service is not available in the list. If you are a regular user of Chrome app launcher from new tab, then you will love this extension. And if you are not used to the launcher, give it a try. It’s a useful tool that adds to your productivity.
