There are programs on our computers that we constantly open. Chrome is probably one of the most used, since it is our gateway to the Internet. However, to open it you need to use the mouse or searching with the Windows button. Thus, if you want to open the program even faster , we can do it by pressing a command or a keyboard key . To do this, we are going to tell you two tricks.
The first of the tricks does not even need to install an additional program. Windows 10 has a built-in shortcut system with keyboard shortcuts . To do this, the first thing we have to do is create a Chrome shortcut on the desktop. To do this, we can do it by going to the start button, searching for Chrome manually, and dragging to the desktop.
Windows 10 allows, by default, to assign commands to shortcuts
Once we have the shortcut created, we right click and go to Properties. In the section that opens there is a box called « Shortcut key «. In it, we can assign any command we want. If, for example, we press the 1 key, the command CTRL + ALT + 1 will be assigned to us automatically. We can also assign others such as ALT + SHIFT + 1, or by combining the keys we want. Once we have done this, we click OK, and when pressing the command from anywhere in Windows, the program will open.
However, while it is convenient to be able to do this with a simple combination of keys, it is even more comfortable to do it with a keyboard key. For example, you probably never press keys like F6, F7, F8, F9 or F10 , as well as SCROLL LOCK , and you could give it more use if you had them assigned to programs or other commands in case your keyboard does not have dedicated macro keys.
Luckily, there are programs that allow us to assign actions to any key on the keyboard. There are peripheral companies like Roccat and Logitech that allow us to reassign any key to the use we want, so if you have a modern gaming keyboard you can check that option. In the event that this is not the case, you can resort to programs like HotkeyP.
HotkeyP: the best program to remap keyboard keys
With HotKeyP you can assign any key to do anything, like open a program, a shortcut, do anything on the system, etc. In this case, we can assign Chrome to any key. To do this, we download the program , unzip it, and execute the HotkeyP.exe file (the program is portable).
If we go to Add, we can choose the command we want, or directly press the key to which we want to assign a program. Below, in Command, we choose the path of the program’s shortcut. In order to open new instances of Chrome each time we press the button, we have to check the option “Enable multiple instances”. If we don’t, pressing the button will switch us between the different Chrome windows that we have open. We can also make it always open with administrator permissions, something useful for programs like Command Prompt if we use the command window a lot.
From now on, we can open Chrome just by pressing a key or with a new shortcut in Windows 10 , and also with the advantage that we can use this for any Windows program and that our day to day is a little easier. .
