Chrome Shortcuts

I had this idea to make the browser more friendly to a keyboard native user like me. In the CLI I rely heavily on shortcuts aka “aliases” to navigate. So in 2017 I built a chrome extension that allows you to do this. The usage is simple, you navigate to a site you want to create a shortcut for, then add the page with a custom keyword:

I put it up in the chrome webstore and forgot about it. A few years later (in 2020) I was looking through the google analytics and realized that this project I had put up was thriving, it had over 1,300 users spread out over every geography imaginable.

This was despite the project having some serious shortcomings, there was no ability to remove individual entries, and no ability to edit after you’ve added a shortcut.

Someone even forked the project and created Chrome Shortcut Manager DELUXE complete with a youtube video demo. I emailed the developer and got this back:

I decided there was more to be done to improve the experience for everyone, so I put up a website for the site, added the ability to remove individual entries and improved the UI a bit.