Chromebook Reviews

Although ChromeOS is a cloud-first OS, old habits die hard and it’s nice to have web apps with their own windows (these are often called progressive web apps–which open in their own window and may sometimes have additional offline features).

On a new Chromebook, you already “preinstalled” apps from Google’s Office Suite: Docs for word processing, Slides for presentations, and Sheets for spreadsheets. However, these apps function more like links that open the Google Docs website in the regular Chrome browser. For some users (me), this can be a bit annoying since the address bar, tabs, and browser buttons take up valuable screen real estate and for concentration purposes, office apps may be one of those web apps you may want to use full-screen.

So how do you do this?

1. First, you want to navigate to Google Docs.
2. Once there, click on the Chrome settings menu (three dots on the right of the browser), scrolls down to “Cast, Save, and Share” and then you can click “Install as an App” or “Create Shortcut -> Open as Window.” I had the same result with both, but Install as an App is your best bet.
3. Repeat the same process with Google Slides and Google Sheets.
4. If for any reason it keeps opening in the browser, go to the Chromebook Settings app -> Manage apps -> Click the app and scroll down to where it says “Opening supported links” to which you can click “Open in Docs app” versus “Open in Chrome Browser.
5. Now every time you open one of the Google Docs apps, they will open in their window, with a file list preview at the start.

This is a great interface tweak for me since it allows me to more easily concentrate on documents I’m working on and get less distracted. Many web apps work well within the browser itself, but having their own window can help reduce distractions and give you more room to work on your documents.

This is also a tool that you can use to turn any website into a standalone “app.” However, it seems less practical to do unless it’s a functional web app like Discord.

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