Workaround: Chrome will not PIN sites to Windows 10 Taskbar

I could rant for a long while about how Microsoft removed the verb “Pin to Taskbar” from the Shell.Application COM object but I won’t. I will simply say that I think they did that to keep OEM’s from putting crap on it when you buy a new PC. However as so often is the case, there was unintended side effects. Reasonable use cases like Chrome being able to PIN websites and Corporate IT being able to PIN corporate applications comes to mind. Lets not talk about how anti-competitive it looks when Internet Explorer (IE) is able to still pin items to the taskbar yet 3rd Party browsers like Chrome are left in the dust.

Ok I said I wouldn’t rant, here is the workaround.

• Simply do the normal process in Chrome to PIN something to the start menu.
• Then go here:
  • C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Chrome Apps
    • Note: <username> will be your username you use to logon to Windows. If you dont know it simply go to c:\users and you should be able to figure it out
• Find the shortcut Chrome created for your website, right click and you will see “PIN to Taskbar”

Also thanks to Reddit for figuring this out:

Chrome “Add To Taskbar” Issue
byu/Shinenite inWindows10

Leave a comment if it helped you!

-Eric