With the arrival of the Fall Creators Update, Microsoft gave its Edge browser a quite useful function and that perhaps you have not been taking advantage of yet: the possibility of anchoring any website to the taskbar or the start menu.

It is extremely easy to do and the result is a direct access in any of the two places that you most use to start your applications, with a personalized icon according to the web and without limits in the number of sites that you can anchor.

Anchor websites to the taskbar and start menu with Microsoft Edge

All you have to do is open Microsoft Edge, enter the web page you want to anchor, and then click on the menu button on the right (the one with three points).

In the pop-up menu that appears you will find two options: Anchor this page to the taskbar or Anchor this page to Start . You can use one or both if you prefer.

The result is a direct access to your favorite pages that you can now access in one click. Perhaps the only bad news is that they will always open as a tab within Microsoft Edge and not as separate windows.

Pin websites to the taskbar with Chrome

With Chrome you can also add web pages to the desktop and the taskbar, but not to the start menu. But the important difference is that with Chrome you can open each page or webapp as a separate window , and without the browser controls.

With no URL bar, no favorites, no extension buttons or navigation controls, creating an access of this type with Chrome gives the impression that you have your own independent app for each site . It is one of my predicted Google Chrome features.

In this case all you have to do is go to the page, press the menu button in Chrome, navigate to the option More tools and choose Add to the desktop …

When Chrome shows you a popup message to add to the desktop, you can customize the name and you should also check the ” Open as a window ” box.

This adds a shortcut to the desktop that you can then drag to the taskbar and launch as a standalone application, not as another tab next to those already open, but as a new window free of unnecessary controls and buttons.

That icon can also be customized as you want by right clicking on it and choosing the properties. Just as we explained when we told you how to customize all your icons in the task bar in Windows 10 .

We may see something similar in Windows 10 without using Chrome when progressive web applications arrive on the system with the next big update.