3 smart shortcuts for strangely hidden Chrome OS commands

Listen, listen, my friend with the Chromebook: Have I got a delicious new trick for you — uh, for you.

This is a very handy shortcut that you can add to your Chrome OS computer to fill in the odd void and make your system significantly easier to use. Interesting right?

Here’s the thing: For all the progress Google has made with Chrome OS over the years — and sure enough, there have been plenty! — some amazing feats that seem modest remain oddly unaddressed. We are just got a (still buried) way to recover all your apps and windows and avoid that blank, blown up browser window popping up every time you restart your forkin Chromebook, for example, roughly a decade into the platform’s life.

And today’s topic is very much in the same category of “How Could We Not Do It That However?!” feature The main difference is that Google permanent haven’t dealt with this one effectively, so it’s up to you to find or come up with a creative solution.

I’m talking about the lack of a simple restart command in the Chrome OS software. It was something that came up during a conversation with one of my members of the Android Intelligence Platinum community recently, so I started scratching this fuzzy ‘mammal-noggin of mine and put together a solution.

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I honestly never considered the fact that Chromebooks don’t have a simple on-screen restart function, but perceptive Homo sapiens asking me that question is absolutely right: If you look at Chrome OS’ Quick Settings panel, you’ve got a one-click button to shut down your computer — and just that:

JR

Weird, right? But as with most things in GoogleLand, there’s a pretty easy fix. In fact, there are quite a few of them.

Choose your own adventure:

Chrome OS restart shortcut: Custom command options

First, you can take matters into your own hands and create your own custom Chrome OS restart shortcut. The secret lies in the little-known Chrome command to start afresh: All you have to do is type chrome: restart to the address bar of any browser window, and bam — your Chromebook will restart itself.

That’s all well and good, but we can take this a step further and turn it into a really time-saving shortcut. We’re just going to rely on the custom Chrome address bar action method I shared with you a few months ago to do a bit of command creation magic.

Here’s how:

1. Type chrome: settings to the address bar of any Chrome browser window on your Chromebook.
2. Scroll down until you see the Search Engines section, then click the row inside that’s labeled “Manage search engines.”
3. On the screen that appears next, find the line that says “Other search engines” and click the Add box next to it.
4. Now, in the box that appears, enter Restart as a search engine, *R* as keywords, and chrome://restart as a URL — like so:

JR

You can literally create any keyword you want — restart, SAUCE, somebodysave meor maybe even oogaboogaheyhey, if you’re crazy and/or a tech-savvy dolphin who says things like “oogaboogaheyhey.” Whichever keyword you choose will be the command you type into the browser’s address bar whenever you want to restart your Chromebook, so the main thing is that you want it short and simple enough to be effective as a shortcut — but not so short and simple that you may accidentally enter. And, of course, you want it to be something you’ll remember.

Once you’ve done all that, just click the Add button to save it, then type that magic word into the address bar and hit Enter any time you need a fresh start.

Chrome OS restart shortcut: Browser button options

If you’d rather click than just remember a password, take 20 seconds to bring that nifty new restart shortcut to your browser’s address bar as a clickable button.

This is easy to do:

1. Open a Chrome window and look for the bookmarks bar — that strip of links is just below the browser’s address bar. If you don’t see it, press Ctrl-Shift-B to activate it.
2. Right-click (or two-finger click) anywhere within the bar and select “Add page” from the menu that appears.
3. Type Restart for name and chrome://restart for the URL and click the Save button.

Now just look for the Restart button you just created in that area (and drag and drop if you want to move it to a more prominent place). Say yes it’s easy!

Chrome OS restart shortcut: Hardware key combo

Last but not least is the built-in shortcut with your Chromebook’s physical buttons, and that’s something I think about 0.02% of Chromebook owners are aware of. This works fine, but depending on your device’s specs, it may or may not always be as convenient as the on-screen options we just discussed — and it may not be possible at all, even, especially if you’re using a desktop-based Chromebox or other setup.

With regular Chromebooks, however, make a mental note: Holding down the Refresh button on the top row of the keyboard and then tapping the physical power button — either on the side of the device or on the top row of the same keyboard, depending on the device — will cause your computer to reset.

Who knows?!

So there you have it: three quick ‘n’ easy ways to restart your Chromebook in an instant. With any luck, Google will add the proper command for this as part of the on-screen shutdown menu soon, but until then, you have some pretty good options.

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