Tuesday, November 8, 2022

How to add a URL to the home screen on Android

Yeah, so this took me an hour or so to figure out. I live on a beach on the ocean, and I have a boat, so I want to know the tides. The most accurate website I've found for my area is tideking.com. On my laptop, I have a bookmark for the right page on their site, which, of course, goes right to it every time. On my phone, I tried the usual -- go to the site, find the right page, click the hamburger (the 3 dot thing), and click add to home screen. Yep, there is a link on my home screen, but it goes to their main page, not my specific page. I tried this in Chrome, Firefox, and Brave, all the same, it takes me to someplace I've never heard of, not my bookmarked place. Apparently, this is controlled by the website, not me, which is bullshit.

Here is the best answer to go to any URL directly from your home screen:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.deltacdev.websiteshortcut

It's an app called Website Shortcut. It's free, it doesn't have any ads, and it works as expected. Go to your page, copy the URL, open Website Shortcut, paste it in, pick an icon, and give it a name. Put it wherever you want on your home screen Done! It goes directly to your desired page, no problems. I rated it 5 stars.


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