INCREASE YOUR PRODUCTIVITY
Why I Have 2 Installations of Google Chrome.
Why would anyone need 2 installations of Chrome? Well I do it because it saves one of Earth’s most valuable resources… Time.
Yes, I actively use two different installations of Google Chrome. I do this because when paired with the other hotkeys in my workflow, having 2 installations of Chrome helps me work more efficiently and with less clutter. This article will explain the technique so you can do the same:
The Problem
We’re moving to a time where more and more applications are being served as webpages rather than desktop applications. This is great because it allows instantaneous access to the tools you want without having to download them, but this has some downsides too.
One major downside is that it’s much harder to navigate to your application. As a web developer this issue peaks up when I’m trying to view the results of my code changes. I always have to go through a clunky circuit in my workflow where I switch between the IDE and chrome, but then I’ll research something and next time I want to view the website I’m developing I’ll have to hunt for it in a mountain of tabs.
After just a couple hours my tabs typically look something like this:
As you can imagine, it’s hard to find your application in this mess.
The Solution — 2 Installations of Chrome
To solve this problem I have a strategy where I use 2 installations of Chrome. One version is the “General Chrome” where I do all my generic web tasks such as email, browsing the web, Netflix, etc. The second version of Chrome I use as my “Primary Application Chrome”, and with this version I only allow 1 tab to be open and I only use it so serve my “primary use-case”. As a developer this is frequently the web app I’m developing, but I’ve also found good use-cases by having this tab serve:
- The medium article I’m writing, while I do research in the other Chrome.
- The word document or email I’m drafting.
- Salesforce or another web application that I do a lot of work through.
- A tutorial series I’m going through.
…etc
Now usually you can’t install 2 versions of the same application on a computer, so to get around this restriction I install the normal version of Chrome and the Canary version of Chrome.
This workflow is optimized even further through hotkeys. One hotkey I really like for this is the windows hotkey where you can type windows key + a number and that will open the taskbar application in the slot you pick. This hotkey doesn’t come out of the box on MacOS so I installed a tool called Snap to get the same features.
This is my favorite hotkey to use to travel around applications and as a web developer it lets me quickly switch between my IDE and Chromes. It’s like an ALT+TAB that works for multiple tabs without having to go around a “roulette” to find the tab you want.
Today I have it setup so that:
- CMD + 1 goes to VSCode
- CMD + 2 goes to my “general chrome” w/ the typical 10,000 tabs
- CMD + 3 goes to my “primary application” chrome where I have only 1 tab serving up 1 application.
Well that’s it! I hope you find these tips helpful for your workflow. If you have any other tips let me know. Thanks.
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