ChatGPT is an extremely useful tool, and I find myself using it pretty much every day. Recently, it got to the point where I wanted to just download a Desktop version of the app, but sadly, it seems like there aren’t any good, safe ways to do that yet.
In the meantime, I’m happy to just set up a hotkey to launch the site. The easiest way to do this that I’ve found is as follows:
- Make a bookmark for https://chat.openai.com/chat in your browser.
- Drag that bookmark from your bookmarks bar to your Desktop, or anywhere else on your computer.
- Right click, select Properties, and set a key/shortcut to open the bookmark. If you use a common key, Windows will probably make you use Ctrl + Alt + <key>, but I chose the “/” key on my numpad, which I’ve never used for anything else, and it let me use that key in isolation.
- Now, if I press “/”, ChatGPT opens up in my current browser window. How convenient is that?
One caveat is that the launch via this shortcut can have some small delay (usually less than 3 seconds), because according to this thread, Windows is polling all the open applications to see if the key is meant for them first. With only my browser running, the shortcut is almost instant.
If someone has an easier way to do this without any consistent delay (without using a 3rd party software like AutoHotKey), let me know! Otherwise, please follow me if I helped you out! This is nothing groundbreaking, you could always do this with any site but I didn’t think about what a big time save this would be until recently.
