title: Open Sites Like Whatsapp As Chrome Apps
tags: web chrome

There is actually a nice general method:
```bash
google-chrome --app=https://web.whatsapp.com/
```
and this works for any website. So for example
```bash
google-chrome --app=https://pt2.allsup.co/linux/xdg/OpenWhatsappWeb
```
will open this page as an app. Note that such apps do not get a URL bar.

Then you can (thanks to gist linked below) use `wmctrl` to activate a Whatsapp window
and only fail over to launching a new one if there isn't one:
```bash
wmctrl -xa web.whatsapp.com || /opt/google/chrome/google-chrome --app=https://web.whatsapp.com/
# or
bash -c "wmctrl -xa web.whatsapp.com || /opt/google/chrome/google-chrome --app=https://web.whatsapp.com/"
```

## Linux `.desktop` file
From [this gist](https://gist.github.com/ajikamaludin/9fb61b0c62ca15e7fedcfa6db7e627be)