For me, running something like
start chrome https://google.com
opens a page in a new tab, but running
start chrome http://
(as suggested by the other answer) opens a new window. Perhaps it worked in the past?
As an ugly workaround, I save the following script as newtab.bat, and run the script from my shortcut key instead of running chrome directly:
@if (@CodeSection == @Batch) @then
@echo off
SET SendKeys=CScript //nologo //E:JScript "%~F0"
SET KEY_NAME="HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\App Paths\chrome.exe"
FOR /F "tokens=2* delims= " %%A IN ('REG QUERY %KEY_NAME% /ve') DO SET Chrome=%%B
"%Chrome%" https://google.com
%SendKeys% "^t^+{TAB}^w"
goto :EOF
@end
// JScript section
var WshShell = WScript.CreateObject("WScript.Shell");
WshShell.SendKeys(WScript.Arguments(0));
Explanation:
Get the chrome executable path from the Windows registry
Run chrome, opening https://google.com
in a new tab (brings chrome into focus)
SendKeys Ctrl+t
This is the shortcut for opening a new tab.
SendKeys Ctrl+Shift+Tab
This shortcut switches back one tab (to google, which we just opened).
SendKeys Ctrl+w
This shortcut closes the current tab (the google tab).
(Did I mention it was an ugly workaround?)
The result is the chrome://newtab
page opened in an existing chrome window (or a new window if none were open on the current desktop). I tried a lot of other variations of command line arguments and shortcuts, but I just couldn't find a better way from outside of chrome to open the new tab page in an existing window.
The SendKeys parts are modified from this answer.