How to gain quick access to Google shortcuts from MacOS

I make no secret of the fact that I’m a power user of Google Drive. After all, I spend 8-9 hours a day working in this ecosystem and writing words like my life depends on it. Because I spend so much time in the great Googly world, I grab it whenever I can bring an efficiency edge into the mix.

One day I was browsing the MacOS App Store (like I usually do) and came across a simple little app that looked pretty promising. This app is called Shortcut For Google Apps and it’s exactly what the name suggests – it’s a tiny app that gives you quick access to shortcuts for the following Google apps:

• Seek
• Google Drive
• gmail
• youtube
• calendar
• Documents
• cards
• photos
• leaves
• Translate

Simply put, you open the app and click on the Google app you want to work with and your default browser will open to that app. The catch with the app is that it looks like it’s free. It is not. You can install it and try it for 1 day, but after that you have to pay the lifetime purchase fee of $2.99 ​​(in-app). Another limitation of the app is that it really does just that – open the apps. So instead of opening Docs in a new, blank document, it just opens docs.google.com.

Essentially, this is just a simple app that acts as a quick bookmark for the most commonly used Google apps. It would be nice if you could customize it so that clicking on Docs or Sheets opens a brand new (blank) Google Doc.

Likewise: How to organize your Google Drive with these 5 tips

Still, I find the app pretty useful as I don’t tend to use bookmarks these days. Instead, I use a combination of pinned tabs and history. It’s the workflow I’ve grown accustomed to, and anytime I can add something to the mix to make it even more efficient, I’m in.

So, how to add this handy app to macOS? let me show you

Install Shortcut For Google Apps app

1. Open the App Store

Open the App Store on your macOS device and search for Shortcut for Google. On the resulting page, click Retrieve (illustration 1) and then click Install.

If prompted, enter your password or (if you have the touch bar or a fingerprint sensor) touch your fingerprint to the biometric scanner.

Installing the app should only take a few seconds.

Using the Shortcut For Google app

1. Open the app

Click the Launchpad entry in your Dock and type Google. You should see the listed entry (figure 2).

Click on the entry to start the app. If Shortcut For Google appears on your desktop (figure 3), click on the app you want to launch and it will open in your default browser.

2. Adding a shortcut to the Dock

You probably don’t want to have to go through the launchpad every time you need the app. After all, it’s about being as efficient as possible. For that purpose, you should add a shortcut for the app to your Dock. To do this, open the app, locate the entry in the Dock, right-click it and choose Options > Keep in Dock (figure 4).

One thing I don’t like about macOS is that you can’t assign a keyboard shortcut to open an app. That would make this tool even more efficient, but unfortunately it’s not meant to be.

This one trick pony app might not be a deal maker or breaker for most, but for anyone who works on Google Apps all day, the time saved with this app really validates the $2.99 ​​cost of the app. Sure, you could always just pin these pages as tabs in your browser, but if you’re like me, you already have enough tabs open and don’t want to add more to this mix. If that sounds like you, give this app 1 day old and see if you don’t think it’s valuable.