Create Website Shortcuts (.URL) that Open in Edge

This page lists some of the command-line switches for the new Microsoft Edge (chromium) browser.

Microsoft Edge (Chromium) command-line switches

The new Microsoft Edge (Chromium) is a classic desktop app that supports command-line arguments as Chrome does. Here are some examples:

To start Edge in private mode:

msedge --inprivate

To open a particular website:

msedge https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/

(or)

microsoft-edge:http://www.google.com
(Yes! the microsoft-edge: protocol still works in the new MS Edge)

To start Microsoft Edge and restore the previous session:

msedge --restore-last-session

The above command is equivalent to right-clicking on the New tab or on the title bar and clicking Reopen closed window in the Context Menu. This option is useful if you have closed Edge with many open tabs and need to relaunch it with the same tabs open.

msedge --start-maximized

The above command starts Edge in maximized mode always, regardless of the window position when you closed it last time.

Since Microsoft Edge is based on Chromium, many of the Chromium command-line switches would apply to MS Edge as well.

List of Chromium Command Line Switches « Peter Beverloo:
https://peter.sh/experiments/chromium-command-line-switches/

Additional Tip: Create a Website shortcut that opens in Edge

Double-clicking website shortcuts open in whatever you’ve set as the default web browser. But if you want to create website shortcuts that always open in Microsoft Edge no matter what your default browser is, here is how to do that.

Many of the built-in universal apps register a URL protocol by default; for example, running calculator: from the Run dialog launches Calculator. Likewise, Microsoft Edge also implements a URL protocol named microsoft-edge:

To create a website shortcut (.url) for google.com, that opens in Edge, use the following target:

microsoft-edge:http://www.google.com

The resulting file will be an internet shortcut (.url) instead of the standard shortcut (.lnk), as the shortcut target is an URL protocol.

edge url shortcut

In the website shortcut properties dialog, you can change the icon and assign a shortcut key as required. Double-clicking on the shortcut launches the URL in Microsoft Edge.

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Ramesh Srinivasan is passionate about Microsoft technologies and he has been a consecutive ten-time recipient of the Microsoft Most Valuable Professional award in the Windows Shell/Desktop Experience category, from 2003 to 2012. He loves to troubleshoot and write about Windows. Ramesh founded Winhelponline.com in 2005.

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8 thoughts on “Create Website Shortcuts (.URL) that Open in Edge”

    • works fine for me. All I do is type the below into the shortcut followed by the url and it works
      microsoft-edge:https://

  3. This works great on all other browsers like firefox and chrome but when I am actually using the Edge browser. The links do not open. Any ideas?

    Reply

    • Kevin, I have the same issue with these links not working if you are already in edge. Did you ever figure out a solution?

    • I am also having this issue. A customer wants to create a sharepoint link that opens the link in Edge no matter what browser. From Chrome this works like a charm but whenever we click the same link in Edge it opens an “about:blank” page.

      When copying and pasting the same link into Edge it goes to Bing search.

      Hope someone sees this and has an answer, i’ve been wracking my brain around this.

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