As I often like to point out, the letter “P” in P.C. stands for personal. There are many ways to customize a computer so that it’s tailor made to suit your personal needs. One of the most common, and incidentally, one of the changes I’m most asked to make, is to set a specific page to load when launching a web browser. This is commonly known as setting (or changing) your homepage. It’s important to know how to do this yourself, however, because programs, both legitimate and otherwise, are known to change your homepage without your knowledge. Today we’ll investigate how to set your homepage in Internet Explorer, Microsoft Edge, Google Chrome, and Firefox.
Every Windows computer comes with Internet Explorer installed. It’s always been the “go to” browser for every Windows machine since the beginning with Windows 95. It is always preset as the default web browser for the computer, as you’d have to download and install Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox on your own. Starting with Windows 10, Microsoft Edge has replaced Internet Explorer as the default browser going forward. If you own a Windows 10 system and want to go back to the old standby, it’s on your computer, and can be found by clicking the magnifying glass and typing “Internet Explorer”. If you’d prefer Internet Explorer to be your web browser of choice instead of Edge, simply set it to be the default. If you aren’t sure how to do that, refer to our prior post, “Programs by Default.”
Now that we have the basics out of the way, if you’re currently running Microsoft Edge on a Windows 10 P.C. and wish to set or change your homepage, launch Edge, and click the three dots (…) in the upper right corner of your screen. Next, click “Settings”, then scroll down and click “View advanced settings”. Make sure that “Show the home button” is set to on (click it if it isn’t), then type the web address of the page you’d like to see first when heading to the Internet. Many prefer to have their e-mail provider open, first, i.e. https://mail.google.com. Click “Save” when you’re finished. Internet Explorer users should open the program, then click the “gear” icon in the top right corner of the screen, then “Internet Options”. On the “General” tab, under the “Home Page” heading, type the web address you’d like to see displayed when starting Internet Explorer. Incidentally, press “Enter” on your keyboard and type another address beneath the first one if you’d like two tabs to open at once. When you’re finished, click “OK”. If you prefer Google Chrome, launch the program, then click the three lines in the top right of your screen (below the red X). Next, click “Settings”, and under the “On startup” tab, check the box for “Open a specific page or set of pages.” Finally, click “Set pages” to enter the desired URL. Click “OK” and you’re done. Lastly, in Mozilla Firefox, first start Firefox, then click the three lines in the top right corner of your screen (below the red X). Next, click “Options” then select the “General” tab. Under the “Startup” heading, click the dropdown arrow to select “Show my home page”, then type the desired homepage in the box below that. If you’d like to have more than one page open on startup, type the first address, then put a “|” (pipe), then the next URL with no spaces between the addresses or the pipe. Click “OK” when finished.
Setting homepages is a pretty easy thing to do, and definitely a time saver. I personally set my personal and work e-mail accounts to open automatically when I launch Google Chrome. After all, there’s only so much clicking you can do in one day!