I have a confession – I hate browser tabs. I like my apps to run with an app icon and without the browser chrome (pun partially intended). Thankfully, it’s really easy to install Google apps onto Windows 10/11 and have them look and behave like Windows applications. I’ll show you how below the screenshot flex. ^_^
Once “installed” on your machine, they behave mostly like their Microsoft Office counterparts. Note that while the steps below focus on Windows PCs and the Windows taskbar, this approach also works for installing web apps to the Dock on Mac PCs.
- Open files properly group together – no more browser tab groups
- You can pin the apps to the taskbar – and they behave as you expect
- You can open them by clicking on them
- You can use your middle-mouse button to open a new instance (cool trick)
- You can make them available offline
Installing them is really easy:
- Open your Google app of choice in Chrome – i.e., Google Sheets
- Install the app by clicking on the three dots in the upper-right corner and selecting “Cast, save, and share” -> “Install page as an app…”
- Give the ‘app’ a name – this is how you will find it on your PC and how the Window will be named
- At this point, it will show up on your taskbar, and you can pin it if you want (by right-clicking and selecting ‘Pin to taskbar’
And enjoy your new app experience!
Also – once you’ve done the above, you can – of course – still open and use your various Google Docs in the web browser. I have not personally seen any downside of installing the Google app experiences as web apps on either my Windows nor Mac PCs.
