Desktop - Create page shortcut versus Install

I get the difference between a shortcut to a webpage and the install option. Pages flagged as PWAs give the install option in Brave. That’s fine. No need to “install.”

My question is, why can’t Brave do what Chrome does and allow a shortcut to be made of any page as a window which basically makes it look like a standalone app?
Chrome has the option to “Install page as app…” when it’s not a PWA. Before this, they used to do this where it created a shortcut and gave a checkbox option to “Open in window,” which basically makes it look like an app.

I was all set to drop Chrome. Even set Brave as my default browser. Then I realized I still need to keep my Chrome shortcuts (page-apps) like GMail so they don’t open with the browser url bar, etc. at the top. The pain with that is then any link clicked within an email in the GMail window opens a Chrome browser instead of Brave.

Firefox doesn’t have this option either. So is this just some Chrome magic that makes this possible? I thought with Brave being Chromium-based it may have the ability baked in.

Thanks!

This is a known issue:

As the last comment notes, you should be able to use the flag brave://flags/#shortcuts-not-apps as a temporary workaround for this issue.

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Ah okay. Thanks for the reply, @Mattches
Yes, disabling that flag brings the “Open as window” option to the create shortcut option.
Perfect.

I googled this quite a bit before posting here and came up with nothing. Didn’t think to check the github though.

Thanks!

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No worries, glad we were able to at least work around the issue. Closing this thread for now — please don’t hesitate to reach out again with any questions or concerns.