How to Create Desktop Shortcuts for Stadia Games on Windows.
Unlike regular games, Stadia games remain on the Stadia website, which means you have to open the website first and then search for a game to open it. But you can completely remove this process and add Stadia games to your home screen or taskbar. Here’s how.
Read also: All games announced by Google at STADIA Connect 2020
Create desktop shortcuts for Stadia games on Windows
It’s easy to add Stadia games to your desktop. To get started, open any game that you want to play immediately, click “Play” to enter full screen mode. Now press and hold ESC until you exit full screen mode. You can see the lock icon in the Omni bar, just click and drag this icon to your desktop and tada, the shortcut is ready and when you click on it, it will launch the game directly.
But this process has several drawbacks: you cannot get the game icon on the shortcut, you cannot search for the game in the Start menu, and you cannot even pin it to the taskbar, since this is not an application.
Here’s a better way.
To easily add Stadia games to your desktop, we have a third party website called Play Cloud that makes this process easy. Once you visit the website, you will see a list of Stadia games in alphabetical order, just scroll down and select the game you are interested in.
Click on the game you want to add a shortcut to, a second page will open where you can set a shortcut by opening the three-dot menu More Tools Create Shortcut.
It will show you a popup confirming the creation of the shortcut. You can also change the name of the shortcut or continue with the default name. Do not check the “Open as window” box, as this will break the full screen mode of the game.
And that’s all. The shortcut for the game is already installed on your PC, you can see it on your desktop or find the game in the Start menu to launch it. You can also pin the game to the taskbar and the game will launch instantly, without any additional steps.
Anyway, this step only works in the Chrome browser and some chrome based browsers. For example, if you are in Edge, you can do the same, but instead of creating a shortcut, you need to open the three-dot menu Applications Set this site as an application. Anyway, all browsers have a way to set the webpage as apps, and you can use the Play Cloud app to directly launch the game instead of the Stadia website.
Packaging
Most games are on PlayCloud, but sometimes they are a little slow on uploading new games as they have to buy a game in order to create a shortcut and it’s just maintained by a Reddit user. Therefore, if your game is not available on Play Cloud, you can follow the first process where you can simply drag and drop it.
Also Read: How to Play Stadia in Unsupported Countries