Top 10 Chrome tips

Chrome’s Omnibox aka the address bar packs in a lot of functionality. You can use the Omnibox to do calculations, check weather, convert units, start timer, search into websites directly and more. Moreover, you can use the Omnibox for more advanced tasks like sending an email or saving an event to the Calendar. However, you will have to follow a few steps before you can start adding Google Calendar events from the calendar. Here goes:

• First, head to Chrome settings and click on “Manage search engines” in the Search engine section.
• Here, just scroll down and click on the Add button next to “Other search engines”.
• In the first box, add a name like “Google Calendar Event” and add a keyword that you’d like to use to trigger the events feature in the Omnibox. We are simply using “Calendar“. Once done, paste this link “http://www.google.com/calendar/event?ctext=+%s+&action=TEMPLATE&pprop=HowCreated%3AQUICKADD” in the third box. Click on “Add”.
• Then, just type “Calendar” in the Omnibox and press Tab. Then, just type your event details in natural language and press Enter.
• The Google Calendar page should then open up with all your details. You can just press “Save” here to save the event. Well, this is surely a handy way to add Google Calendar events from Chrome.

Here’s a cool Chrome trick that not may people know and it has to do with Chrome autofill. The autofill feature in Chrome is pretty great. It saves you from the hassle of entering your addresses and card details again and again. However, what if you have started using a different card or moved to a new place? Don’t worry, Chrome lets you manually update the Autofill data. Just head over to Chrome Settings and click on “Autofill” on side bar. Here you will find three options; Passwords, Payment Options, and Addresses. Click on the one you want to manually manage. Now, click on the “Add” button and add the info that you want to add. For example, when I click on the “Add” button in the addresses option, I get a form to enter the address that I want to use as a part of my autofill settings, as shown in the picture below.

Chrome’s notifications feature is great. However, it can get annoying too, especially if you allow many websites to send you notifications. Also, it’s important to note that these notifications arrive even when you’ve closed Chrome. Thankfully, you can block Chrome notifications. On a PC or Mac, go to Chrome Settings -> Privacy and Security -> Site Settings. Here, click on the “Notifications” section. Now, you can either choose to “not allow any site to show notifications“. To do that, just turn off the toggle marked in the picture below. If you want to block notifications from a particular website, you can click on “the three-dot menu” next to the website link and and do the same. On an Android device, you can go to Chrome Settings -> Site Settings -> Notifications, where you will find websites that bring you notifications. You can then tap on a site and in the permissions section, choose “Block”.

Chrome features a number of great keyboard shortcuts that can surely make things faster for you. Here are the most useful ones:

• Ctrl+1-9: You can switch between different tabs with these shortcut. Here, 1 is the first tab and 9 being the last.
• Ctrl+Tab: This keyboard shortcut lets you switch to the next tab on the right. You can move to the tab on the left by using Ctrl+Shift+Tab.
• Ctrl+Shift+N: You can open Incognito mode with this shortcut.
• Ctrl+Shift+T: Accidentally closed a tab? Hit this keyboard shortcut to quickly reopen it. You can also hit the key multiple times to restore multiple tabs.
• Ctrl+Shift+Delete: This keyboard shortcut takes you to the “Clear browsing data” page, where you can clear Chrome’s cookies, cache, history and other data.
• Ctrl+L: You can quickly move your cursor to the Omnibox with this shortcut.
• Shift+Esc: Want to keep a check on the memory hogging tabs? Hit this shortcut to open up Chrome’s task manager.
• Ctrl+W: You can quickly close a tab with this keyboard shortcut.
• Ctrl+N: Quickly open a new Chrome window with this shortcut.
• Ctrl+T: This keyboard shortcut lets you open a new tab. Note: You can use these commands on a Mac by replacing the Ctrl key with the “Command” key and Alt key with the “Option” key.

Chrome’s Omnibox is pretty powerful and can do a lot of things including making general Google searches, simple mathematical operations, searches inside specific websites, and more. However, did you know that you can directly search for your emails using the Chrome Omnibox? Well, if you didn’t know that then this point will come handy to you. You will have to set it up first for it to work. For enabling searching email from Chrome’s Omnibox, we will be using its “Custom Search feature”. First, head to Chrome settings and click on “Manage search engines” in the Search section. Now, click on the “Add” button and enter the name (use Gmail as we are creating a search for Gmail) in the first field and the shortcut in the second field. In the last field, you will have to add a custom Gmail search URL which is given below.

https://mail.google.com/mail/ca/u/0/#search/%s

Now, click on the “Add” button to add this custom search. Whenever you want to search for an email, just type your custom shortcut and hit either the tab or the space button. It will turn the Omnibox into a search field. Now, type the query and hit enter to see your search results.

Most of us are familiar with split-screen mode on our Android devices which allows us to use two apps at once. However, not many of us know that we can even use the split-screen mode to display two Chrome tabs at once. To do this, first launch “Chrome” on your phone and then open a couple of tabs. Now go into the split screen mode as you normally do and select Chrome. Now, tap on the three-dots menu at the top right and then tap on “Move to Other Window”. As soon as you do that you will see that Chrome has opened two tabs in a split-screen mode allowing you to browse two websites at once. This feature can be really useful when you want to cross-check information from multiple websites.

Chrome comes with many hidden features which are quite easily accessible when you know how to access them. Take, for example, the right-click menu that nobody ever tries to access despite the fact that it’s present there all the time. When you right click on a Chrome’s tab, you can access many features. We already explained the pinning tab feature above. You can also use it to mute a tab and manage tabs. If you have a ton of tabs open and you want to most of them while keeping some of the open, you can do that by using the right-click menu. Right-click on the tab that you want to save and then select the “Close tabs to the right” option. This will close all the tabs that are to the right of the current tab.

• By default Chrome does not show home button in the browser.
• Enter the URL “chrome://settings/” in address bar and go to “Appearance” section. Learn more Chrome URL commands.
• Select the check box “Show Home Button” and instantly the home button will be displayed in the browser next to the address bar.
• You can set any URL for a home page by clicking on the “Change” link or else by default a new tab page will be set as your home page. For keyboard shortcut, use Alt + Home to access home page of the browser.

Using tabs appropriately can improve your productivity on Chrome.

• Drag and drop a tab outside a browser window to open it in a new window.
• If your mouse has middle button, use the center click on the tab to close it.
• Use Shift key to select more than one tab to move left or right together. You can also click Ctrl + W to close all the tabs in once.
• Ctrl + T open a new tab in the same window. When many tabs are opened in a window use Ctrl +1 to move to the first tab and Ctrl + 9 to move to the last tab. Ctrl + 2 to Ctrl + 8 will move to the corresponding tabs in the browser.
• Click on a tab to view more options like pinning or duplicating a tab.
• Pinning a tab will move it to the left corner with only the favicon is displayed. This will be useful especially when you opened many tabs sliding across single window.
• You can close all other tabs or all tabs right to the tab you are viewing.

• If your mouse has a middle button, use the center click on any link to open the page in a new tab. This will work for all the links including drop-down menus.
• Use Ctrl + Left click to open a link in a new tab and Shift + Left click to open a link in a new window.
• Drag and drop any URL link on a page to the address bar to open it in the same page. You can also drag and drop a menu link to the address bar.
• Alt + Left click will download the link in default download folder.