Also Read: All the Games Google Announced in STADIA Connect 2020 Create Desktop Shortcuts for Stadia Games on Windows Adding Stadia games to the desktop is easy. To start with, open any game that you would like to play instantly, click on “Play” to enter the full-screen mode. Now long-press ESC until you exit the full-screen mode. You can see the lock icon in the Omni bar, just click and drag that icon to the desktop and tada, the shortcut is ready and when you click on it, it will launch the game directly.
But this process has a few downsides though, you cannot get the game icon on the shortcut, you cannot search for the game on the start menu and you cannot even pin it on the taskbar as it is not an app. Here is a better method. To add Stadia games easily to the desktop, we have a third-party website called Play Cloud that makes the process easier. Once you are on the website, you can 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 wanted to add the shortcut, it will open a second page where you can install the shortcut by opening the three-dot menu > More Tools > Create Shortcut.
It will show you a pop-up confirming to create the shortcut. You can also change the name of your shortcut or you can continue with the default name. Do not check the “Open as Window” option as it will disrupt the full-screen mode of the game.
And that’s it, Shortcut for the game is already installed on your PC, you can see it on the desktop or either you can search for the game on the start menu to launch it. And you can also pin the game to the taskbar and the game launches instantly without a second step involved.
Anyhow, this step works only on the Chrome browser and few chromium-based browsers. For example, if you are on the Edge, you can do the same, but instead of creating a shortcut, you need to open the three-dot menu > Apps > Install this site as an app. Anyhow, all browsers have a way to install webpage as apps and you can use the Play Cloud app to directly launch the game instead of the Stadia website.
Wrapping up
PlayCloud has most of the games, but sometimes they are a bit slow to unload the new games as they need to buy the game to create the shortcut and it is just maintained by a Reddit user. So if your game is not available on the Play Cloud, you can follow the first process where you can simply drag and drop. Also Read: How to Play Stadia in Unsupported Countries
