External Display BrowserApps3 min read

How to Install Websites as Apps in Your Dock

The sites you use every day shouldn't be buried in a tab. XeOS lets you install any website into the dock, where it gets its own icon and opens in its own window, YouTube, Gmail, Sheets, Netflix, your work tools. This is the feature that makes the desktop feel less like a browser and more like a computer.

Adding a site

Open the Browser and navigate to the site.
Click ⋯ in the toolbar.
Choose Add Site to Dock.

The browser options menu with the Add Site to Dock entry visible. — One entry in the ⋯ menu.

The site appears in the dock with its own icon, taken from the site's own favicon. Click it and it opens in a dedicated window with no tab strip and no address bar, just the site.

The XeOS dock along the bottom of the screen with app icons. — Installed sites sit in the dock next to the built-in apps.

Rearranging and customising

Right-click any dock item for its options, rename it, give it a different icon, move it, or remove it.

The context menu on a dock item. — Right-click a dock item to rename, re-icon or remove it.

Two useful distinctions when removing something:

Hide from dock, takes the tile away but keeps the site installed.
Uninstall Site, removes it entirely.

Built-in apps you never use can be hidden the same way, and everything can be dragged into whatever order you like. Dock size, magnification and auto-hide live in Settings › Dock.

The Dock pane in XeOS Settings. — Settings › Dock, size, magnification, auto-hide, and which built-in apps appear.

The Apps drawer

The first tile in the dock opens the Apps drawer: everything installed, in one grid, with a search box. Handy when you've installed more sites than fit comfortably in the dock.

Sites are managed from their own icon here, right-click one in the drawer for the same rename, re-icon, hide and uninstall options.

Floating windows and detached tabs

Any browser tab can become a window of its own: right-click the tab and choose Open in Floating Window. That window is independent, move it, resize it, put it full screen, which is how you get a video playing on one part of the screen while you work on another.

An installed site can also be set to open as a floating window by default, so clicking its dock icon goes straight there.

Finding things fast

Press Option Space for the search overlay. It searches your apps, your installed sites, your files across mounted locations, and will run a web search for anything else you type.

The search overlay open over the desktop with results for a typed query. — Option Space, apps, sites, files and web search in one box.

To see everything currently open, press Ctrl ↑ (Option ↑ on iPad) for the overview, or hold Ctrl and press Tab to cycle windows.

An overview showing all open windows tiled on screen. — The overview of every open window.

Your session comes back

Windows you leave open, including installed sites and detached tabs, reopen at the same size and position next time you plug in a display. So does your place on the page. Setting the desktop up the way you like it is a one-time job.

XeOS: External Display Browser turns an iPhone or iPad into a full desktop on any monitor, TV or projector.

Download XeOS on the App Store