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I am trying to create a shortcut for XLaunchpad and WinLaunch so that I can get a "new tab" (which contains the shortcuts to apps, etc.) to appear. Not about:blank or a URL.

However when I use

chrome chrome://newtab

It keeps on opening a new window.

It is sort of the inverse of How can you configure Chrome to open new browser instances in new windows rather than in a tab?

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  • Thanks for the comments below. I've edited your question to make it clearer for others to respond to. Please look at the changes to make sure I got it correct. – Isxek Aug 15 '12 at 5:31
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http://

Just a blank http:// opens a new tab in chrome. This is the StackExchange syntax but its not displaying as a hyperlink:

[http://](http://)

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  • Or, in relation to the actual question, use chrome http://somewebsite.com instead of the chrome:// prefix. – Isxek Aug 14 '12 at 10:32
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    This still opens up the "new tab" in a new window. So this is not correct. – Archimedes Trajano Aug 14 '12 at 15:15
  • @lsxek I am trying to get the "new tab" (which has the apps etc) showing up. – Archimedes Trajano Aug 14 '12 at 15:16
  • actually a blank http:// on the omnibar also redirects to a google search for "http://" so this answer is just wrong. – Archimedes Trajano Aug 14 '12 at 15:18
  • There's a related question on the Chrome forums, but it hasn't been answered yet. Looking at the available CL switches for Chrome, it looks like this ability is not available yet. – Isxek Aug 15 '12 at 7:01
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I finally found a workable solution thanks to this post:

chrome https://www.google.com/_/chrome/newtab

or

start chrome https://www.google.com/_/chrome/newtab

(Don't ask me why/how this opens chrome://newtab)

The address bar would not auto-focus for me with this method like it did when opening the new tab in a new window, so I came up with a workaround. I put the command to open the new tab page into a batch file, and added a command to send Ctrl+L (the shortcut to focus the address bar) using SendKeys (taken from this answer).

This is my newtab.bat file, which I run using my shortcut button:

@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://www.google.com/_/chrome/newtab"
%SendKeys% "^l"

goto :EOF
@end

// JScript section

var WshShell = WScript.CreateObject("WScript.Shell");
WshShell.SendKeys(WScript.Arguments(0));

It performs these steps:

  1. Get the Chrome executable path from the registry
  2. Run Chrome, opening the newtab page in the existing window
  3. Send Ctrl+L to focus the address bar
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