Google launches Chrome Launcher

Google has quietly launched its Chrome App Launcher for Windows. Originally built for Chrome OS in an effort to replicate some of the taskbar or dock functionality in traditional desktop operating systems, the software acts as a hub for all your Chrome apps, allowing users to launch them quickly from the desktop. The release covers both Windows 7 and Windows 8 operating systems, though support for OS X is in the works. The launcher will sit on your desktop taskbar and provide a quick way to access the Chrome Store, and any installed app that works with Google's browser. It also lets you manage certain privacy, network, language and download settings, and supports switching between multiple Google accounts -- so when you are signed in, Gmail will directly load your inbox, Drive will show your saved documents and files, and so on. At first glance the App Launcher is nothing more than a collection of links that load on your browser. But with the introduction of packaged apps and desktop notifications, Google is slowly building something that could be seen as a more serious threat to established desktop platforms. If you are unfamiliar with packaged apps, they’re essentially apps written in standard web languages, but they run outside of the browser as self contained software that can work offline and interface with hardware or network devices. Combined with desktop notifications, they look and act like any other normal app, except they are cross-platform compatible and always up to date. Two recent high-profile examples are Pocket and Wunderlist. If packaged apps actually catch on with developers, Google’s App Launcher will go a long way easing the transition from native Windows or Mac apps to web-based Chrome apps, and perhaps convincing some users that it’s possible to live with a web-centric platform like Chrome OS. Time will tell if the strategy plays out. For now, if you want to give the Chrome App Launcher a try, I suggest you also install a few packaged apps with it. You can find all of them under the packaged apps category in the Chrome Web Store. Aside from the two aforementioned ones, other notable examples include Reditr, 500px, Text, and Spelunkly. After months of behind-the-scenes teases it has arrived finally. The Chrome OS feature—ported over to the Chrome for Windows developer channel in February—wasn’t available through a search of the Chrome Web Store or advertised on the site’s front page at this writing, but Windows users can install it now by navigating directly to the Chrome App Launcher page inside Chrome’s app store. First spotted by Engadget, the new feature is Google’s incursion into the desktop PC, creating a self-sufficient Chrome ecosystem inside Microsoft’s OS. The Chrome App Launcher lets you directly fire up any Chrome Web app or packaged app right from the Windows taskbar—even when Chrome itself isn’t running. Packaged apps are HTML 5-based standalone desktop apps based on Chrome that don’t look anything like your Web browser. There are no tabs, URL address bars, or bookmarks, but these apps do rely on Chrome’s underlying infrastructure and are installed via the Chrome Web Store. It’s still early days for packaged apps, but there are a number you can try out, such as a generic text editor and an IRC client, as well as known quantities like Cut the Rope, the Economist, and Weather Bug Like the app launcher, anyone using the stable version of Chrome will have to navigate to each packaged app directly, as they were not discoverable in the Chrome Web Store at this writing. Google added a packaged apps section to the Chrome Web Store in May for anyone running the dev channel version of Chrome. But that section of the Web store had yet to go live Friday morning, despite the soft launch of the Chrome App Launcher. The two features go together like peanut butter and jelly, so it’s odd that Google has made the app launch available without the new packaged apps section in the Web Store. Perhaps the search giant plans on officially rolling out the app launcher and the packaged apps section of the Web store later on Friday. Actually installing the Chrome App Launcher is a lot easier than it was when we first looked at the new Chrome feature in February. All you have to do now is agree to install the launcher and almost automatically it will show up in your taskbar. Earlier versions required you to install a packaged app first before you could install the app launcher. So far the Chrome App Launcher is only available for Windows users in official builds of Google’s Web browser. In May, the search giant added the launcher to Chromium for Mac (the open source version of Chrome), while Linux users are still left on the sidelines. It looks like the Google Chrome App launcher is finally out of its developers preview mode, as the app is now available for all Windows users. The Google Chrome App launcher will place an app on the start page, taskbar and desktop for Windows 8 and in menu bar for Windows 7, which allows you to quickly access the browser, Chrome store, Gmail or any other application that works with the Google’s browser. Furthermore, you can also sync your apps, bookmarks, history, passwords and other settings across devices by signing in to chrome. Unfortunately, there is no word on the availability of the launcher on OS X and Linux at the moment.