On Windows

Make sure Google Chrome is installed on your Windows

1. In the bottom left corner of your screen, you will see a search bar where it says, “Type here to search.”
2. Click on the search bar and type in “Google Chrome.”
3. If you have Google Chrome installed, the app will appear. If you don’t have it installed, you won’t see the app, and it will ask if you want to search the web.

How to Google Chrome icon to your Windows desktop

Once you’re sure that you have Google Chrome installed, follow the steps below:

1. Go to your desktop and click on the “Windows” icon in the bottom left corner of your screen. Be sure to close any other Google Chrome windows beforehand, opening windows will prevent you from adding the icon to your desktop.
2. Scroll down and find Google Chrome.
3. Click on the icon and drag it onto your desktop.

You now have a Google Chrome icon on your desktop. An even easier way to access Google Chrome is to pin the icon to your taskbar at the bottom of your screen. Just right-click on the icon and select “Pin to taskbar.”

How to Create Chrome Incognito Desktop Shortcut on Windows

There are multiple ways to open Chrome incognito mode. One such way is to create an incognito mode shortcut on the desktop. The desktop shortcut is particularly useful if you want to pin Chrome incognito mode to the taskbar or to open it without first launching the regular Chrome browser window.

No matter the reason, if you ever want a Chrome incognito mode desktop shortcut, follow the below steps to create one. Once you have the desktop shortcut, you can even go on and assign a keyboard shortcut to open the incognito mode.

Create Chrome Incognito Mode Desktop Shortcut

To create an incognito mode shortcut, you just need to add the “–incognito” flag to the chrome.exe file path. Here’s how to do that.

1. Right-click on the empty space on your desktop.
2. Select the “New” option.
3. Select the “Shortcut” option.
   
4. A create shortcut window will open up. Now click on the Browse button and navigate to the chrome.exe file on your computer.
5.  You can also copy and paste the path into the box.
6. Go to the “C:\Program Files\Google\Chrome\Application” folder.
7. Select “chrome.exe“.
   Note: Make sure you add the quotation marks on both sides of the path.
8. Add “–incognito” at the end of the location path. Make sure there is a space between the file path and argument.
   
9. Click the “Next” button.
10. Type a name for the shortcut in the name file.
11. Click “Finish“.

With that, you have created the incognito mode desktop shortcut. From now on, you can open the incognito mode by double-clicking on the desktop shortcut.

Important note: if you are using an x86 system (32-bit) then you have to modify the file path to C:\Program Files (x86)\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe.

Pin incognito mode to taskbar

To pin the Chrome incognito mode to the taskbar, drag and drop the incognito mode desktop shortcut onto the taskbar. As soon as you do that, the shortcut will be pinned to the taskbar.

Open incognito mode with a keyboard shortcut

To open Chrome incognito mode with a keyboard shortcut, right-click on the desktop shortcut and select the “Properties” option.

Next, click in the “Shortcut” field and press the key binding you want to assign. In my case, I’m assigning “Ctrl + Shift + /”. After that, click the “Ok” button.

That is it. As long as the incognito mode shortcut is on your desktop, you can open it by pressing the keyboard shortcut.

If the default Chrome icon is confusing you, you can change it. To do that, right-click on the desktop shortcut, click “Change Icon” and then choose the icon of your choice. After doing that, pin the shortcut to the taskbar.

How to Pin a Specific Chrome User Profile to Taskbar

To launch a specific Chrome user profile from the taskbar, you need to pin that specific Chrome profile to the taskbar.

Follow the guidelines below to know how to.

In the Google Chrome browser, you can create multiple profiles. These profiles are much like your Windows user accounts. Each profile is like a separate container where you can install extensions, customize the browser, and sync browser data with your Google account. The Chrome user profiles are very useful when you want to share the browser with multiple users, or even to separate browsing data, testing, etc.

Like any application, you can pin a Google Chrome user profile to the taskbar. When you do that, you are just pinning the generic Chrome shortcut. As such, launching Chrome from the taskbar will open the last opened profile rather than a specific profile you want, so make sure to pin the specific Chrome profile to the taskbar. Doing so ensures that no matter what profile you used earlier, Chrome will always launch the profile you pinned.

Steps to Pin Chrome Profile to Taskbar

To pin a Chrome profile to the taskbar, you first need to create the shortcut for that profile. In older Chrome versions, you have to manually change the shortcut properties and add the profile name. However, in recent versions, you don’t have to do that. Just toggle the switch and the shortcut will be created for you.

1. First, open the Chrome browser if it is not already open.
2. Make sure that you are in the profile you want to pin. If you are in the target profile, ignore this step. Otherwise, click on the “Profile” icon appearing next to the address bar and select the actual profile.
3. The above action will launch the Chrome browser in the profile of your choosing. Here, type “chrome://settings/manageProfile” in the address bar and press “Enter“.
4. In the Edit person page, toggle the “Show desktop shortcut” and switch to the “On” position.
   

As soon as you do that, you will see a new profile-specific Chrome shortcut on the desktop.

Now, just drag and drop the shortcut onto your taskbar to pin the Chrome profile. Once pinned, you can even see the profile icon.

That is it. You’ve successfully pinned the Chrome profile to the taskbar. Whenever you launch Chrome using that pinned shortcut, it will be launched in that profile.

On Mac

Make sure Chrome is installed on your Mac

1. Open “Finder.”
2. Go to the “Applications” folder on the left side of the window.
3. Scroll through this folder to see if you have Google Chrome. You can also search for it in the top right corner of the window.
4. You will find Google Chrome in the “Applications” folder. If Google Chrome is not in this folder, go ahead and download it to install.

How to Add Google Chrome icon to your Mac desktop

Once you’re sure you have Google Chrome installed, follow the steps below:

• Go to your desktop and open “Finder.” Close any other open Google Chrome windows, this could prevent you from adding the icon to your desktop.
• Select the “Applications” folder on the left side of the window.
• Locate the Google Chrome icon.
• Click and drag the icon onto your desktop.

Now you’ll have a Google Chrome icon on your desktop. You can also add the icon to your dock, usually located at the bottom of your screen. To do this, click and drag the icon into its place on the dock.

On Ubuntu

Create a Chrome shortcut on Ubuntu Desktop

To do so:

1. Locate the google chrome.desktop file in the applications folder
   • Go to Files → Other Location → Computer.
     
2. Then go to the path usr/share/applications and open the folder
3. Scroll down and copy the google chrome.desktop file to the desktop.
   
4. Now, go back to the desktop and right-click on the “google chrome.desktop” file. (When you copy to the desktop, you should see a text file kind of icon on the desktop instead of the logo of the application.)
   
5. Click on the allow launching and the logo will be automatically changed.
   

How to pin Chrome to Taskbar on Ubuntu?

• Go to the Chrome settings.
• Go to “Change name and picture” in the People section.
• Toggle “Show desktop shortcut”
• In case you already pinned your default Chrome to the taskbar, you need to unpin it.
• Find the created shortcut on your desktop and pull it onto your start bar or right-click and select “Pin to taskbar”

How to pin a website in Chrome to Ubuntu taskbar

• Navigate to the website you want to pin.
• Click the three vertical dots in the top right of Chrome,
• hover your mouse over “More Tools,” and click “Create Shortcut.”
• You can either right-click its shortcut on your taskbar and select “Pin to Taskbar” without using the desktop shortcut;

 OR:

• Right-click to open a pop-up “Create shortcut” window
• Mark the “open as window” box
• Then, click on Create.
• Next, pin the opened window to the taskbar

And, that is it, the webpage has been pinned.

Conclusion

Adding these shortcuts to your desktop will allow you to click on them to open them in one step, as well as click and drag other files to them to easily keep your desktop organized. Another important feature is pinning to Taskbar keeps the icon displayed in the Taskbar after the application is closed. This makes your browsing to be efficient and easy to navigate to the Chrome Browser without having to juggle among a plethora of installed applications on the system.