Like other desktop operating systems, Microsoft’s Windows 10 doesn’t ship with Google app support, and that’s a shame for most people. This means popular apps like Google Play Music, Google Photos, Inbox by Gmail and others are absent from the Windows experience on PCs and tablets. This isn’t a knock on either Microsoft or Google, Microsoft offers replacements to those services built into Windows via its own UWP apps, and Google ensures that its services like Play Music and Photos can be accessed by web-apps.

Google’s Chrome (and hopefully Microsoft’s Edge soon) allows users to turn their favourite websites into Windows-style apps, complete with icons ready for the taskbar and start screens.

How to use Chrome to turn your favourite Google sites into apps

Open Google Chrome Navigate to your favourite Google app or service In the menu button, tap “more tools” Select “Add to taskbar” In the menu that pops up, name the app whatever you want and tick the “open as Window” box. The app should now be pinned to your taskbar, whenever you open it, it’ll open as a “chromeless” Window and will act like a real app for all intents and purposes.

Note: While Chrome apps can be pinned to the Start Menu, they will take on the Google Chrome icon for their tile instead of the icon they use elsewhere, making it less desirable to pin them to the Start Menu.

For Google Play Music

If you want something a little more native, there is a third party Google Play music app. This Google Play Music app is excellent and comes with a dark theme, customisable colours more. While it is essentially a desktop wrapper around a website like Slack and WhatsApp, it is results that matter, and this app delivers.

You can snag it here.

Bonus Tip: Google offers a Windows Store app for Windows 10 tablets and PCs, it essentially wraps the web experience of Google into a customised wrapper and lets you quickly access Google apps like YouTube, Gmail and Google Photos among others.