Windows 10 – can I have 2 shortcut to Chrome on the taskbar

Windows really doesn't want to give you full access to these shortcuts (and they have good reasons). The problem is that you can't pin 2 of the same application. But what if we pin a second application to launch the first?

1. Pin Google Chrome to the taskbar as you would normally.
2. Pin the Command Prompt to your taskbar as well.
3. Press -R to bring up the Run dialog, and enter the following location:
   %APPDATA%\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Quick Launch\User Pinned\TaskBar
4. Edit the properties of the Command Prompt shortcut and change the Target to:
   C:\Windows\system32\cmd.exe /c start "" "C:\Program Files\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe" --incognito

   CMD /C Carries out the command specified by string and then terminates but it won't terminate until after the command has completed.
   start can initiate a process without waiting for it to complete

5. Change the icon to the incognito icon (browse for the Chrome executable).
6. On the General tab, change the shortcut name to "Chrome Incognito" or similar. (You need to restart the explorer process or reboot for the icon to change).
7. On the Shortcut tab, change the Run setting to Minimized.

Note: since Chrome running in incognito mode is still Chrome, it appears under the original Chrome icon, not the incognito one.

Surprisingly I'm now allowed to pin the command prompt to the taskbar again. I really did not expect that to work, since I already pinned it.

All if this is so difficult because you can't simply put any shortcut you want into the %APPDATA%\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Quick Launch\User Pinned\TaskBar folder. From my searching, this post shows it best why. The shortcut data is written in the registry in binary.