There's this extension popup warning "Disable developer mode extensions" which shows up on every browser start, even on the dev-channel.
This is annoying beyond belief, but what is even worse, is that there is no clear step by step tutorial on how to allow the automatic execution of an unpacked extension via policies, which they say is the only way to remove the popup.
So, is it even possible to remove the popup for unpacked extensions which resides in a directory on the windows desktop?
How do I go about configuring the computer in such a way that the browser won't bug me on every new browser launch?
There is no intention to pack this extension until it has been fully developed and debugged.
You can't do it without building your own Chrome or hacking the chrome.dll
Here is one example, don't know if it works anymore.
Related
I am developing an extension that uses chrome's Native messaging. After setting the key value in my extension (for native messaging) chrome goes bananas and deletes my files after closing chrome. Turning off sync extensions somehow keeps my files in tact, but it still removes the extension from itself every reboot. I can't figure out if this is some bizarre bug I've stumbled upon or this has to do with not being able to install non web-store extensions
Problem
As you can read on google forums (productforums.google.com), posted on 04.09.2015, new versions of Google Chrome will automatically disable extension that are have not been installed from Chrome Web Store. There is no option to change this behaviour.
Some extensions come bundled with others, which causes Chrome to ask
whether you want to install them (or not). However, bad actors have
abused this mechanism, bypassing the prompt to silently install
malicious extensions that can override browser settings and alter the
user experience in undesired ways.
...
Since these malicious extensions are not hosted on the Chrome Web
Store, it’s difficult to limit the damage they can cause. This is why
we announced in November that as part of our continuing security
efforts, all extensions for Windows users must be hosted in the
Chrome Web Store.
Solutions
1. Use a different browser. For example, Opera (version > 15) and SRWare Iron browsers extensions are 100% compatible and they don't get disabled on each browser startup. All the tools from Google Chrome are available in these browsers.
2. Pack the extension (idea taken from this url). Open the extension page, activate "Developer Mode"; Click "Load unpacked extension..."; Search trough your directory tree for the directory where you unpacked your extension and click OK; Disadvantages: Chrome nags you to disable the extension at each start up
If you are copy/pasting an installed extension that no longer exists, you can modify the manifest and remove:
the key
the update_url
Then load it again and it will work and assume you are developing it.
We built a chrome extension to be used only inside our company by selective people. We do not want to publish this on chrome web store. We could do this before by just drag & drop the crx file in the extensions page.
But in the latest version of chrome(i use 35.x), we are not able to do this anymore. Whenever we try to install the crx file, chrome automatically disables it and shows a message
"This extension is not listed in the Chrome Web Store and may have been added without your knowledge"
with a link to https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/2811969 where it says
"You're seeing this notification because one or more of your Chrome extensions has been turned off to make Chrome safer. The extensions didn't come from the Chrome Web Store or were installed without your permission."
So, Does this mean we can never install crx file from now on? No workaround?
I know we can install using Group Policy method, but is that the only way we can do this?
Thanks in advance.
Yes, this has been disabled as a protection against malware.
The only workarounds I'm aware of are:
turn on Developer Mode and have users install as an unpacked extension after unzipping the CRX
publish unlisted or to a Google Group: https://support.google.com/chrome/a/answer/2663860?hl=en
I'm trying to add the Rapid Interface Builder extension to chrome using the rib.crx file I downloaded from https://01.org/rapid-interface-builder/downloads/2012/rib-preview-1-chrome-extension
Unfortunately, every time I open the crx file with chrome I get the following error:
Apps, Extensions and scripts cannot be added from this website.
Any ideas on how to fix this?
Instead of opening the file, you have to: extract it (crx are zip files), then visit chrome://extensions, enable developer mode, and load unpacked extension.
The reason for this is: lots of people try to abuse chrome apps/extensions to install nasty applications to your browser. So Chrome tries to make it impossible to automatically side-load these apps without you making sure that is really what you want to do.
So.. typical caveats of installing software apply when using this approach.
You can now also just drag-and-drop the .crx file onto the chrome://extensions page and it will install, too.
Edit 2019-01-10: Make sure to enable Developer mode for extensions. If this was not enabled, refresh the chrome://extensions page after enabling it.
Edit 2018-08-24: This works on Windows, too.
Edit:
This doesn't work on Windows. Verified on OSX and ChromeOS. From what I've read, this will work on Linux, too.~
(I initially experienced the same problem you described.*)
This solution worked for me in Windows 10 (build th1511) x64:
Open Chrome as you normally would.
Go to the "Extensions" page (chrome://extensions; or click Menu button at top right corner → From 'More tools' drop down menu select 'Extensions').
Drag and drop the .crx file onto the extensions page in Chrome -onto the list of extensions.
You should see a dialog stating "Drop here to install". This must be present. (If you do NOT see this, reposition your mouse - it may be too far to the side of the page.)
It should load successfully and you should see the extension in the list immediately afterward.
*I received the same error you described when attempting to load the .crx file (packed extension) by right-clicking/double-clicking it and selecting "Open With" "Chrome", and by dragging/dropping the file onto a regular webpage in Chrome.
In the Extensions page, just enable Developer mode. From there you can drag and drop any .crx file there and installation prompt will follow suit.
Open Chrome with this parameter --enable-easy-off-store-extension-install, then go to extensions and enable Developer mode. Now you can install .crx files without any problem.
go on extension, and your first step is on developer mode, 2 step update extensions, and last drop IDM extension file on google chrome.
As the title suggests I'm looking for a better Chrome extension development environment. I'm using Sublime Text 2 for my IDE, which is fine. The problem lies with testing the extension. Right now, when I need to test the code I've written I first have to launch Chrome with the –enable-easy-off-store-extension-install parameter. Then I need to package it through Chrome as an .crx file. Finally I have to drag and drop the file into Chrome and manually install it. Obviously this can get very time consuming very quickly.
I know I can test an extension as an unpacked extension, but this causes permission errors which is a problem since I need to perform CORs. Is there a better way to test extensions in Chrome?
I found that the chrome webbrowser recently disabled the ability to deploy extensions that are not from the chrome webstore. I tried opening my extension.crx directly intro chrome and it wont work anymore, it just download the file.
I know I could use the "load unpacked extension", but I need to do it in about 50 computers, so it's not a very practical way.
Does anyone knows any other ways to deploy an extension that is not in the webstore?
Maybe "loading an unpacked extension" programmatically from an .exe or something like that.
Have you tried dragging it over to Chrome, either from the download bar or the file browser on your operating system? I seem to remember this has been an issue earlier...
There is more information about how to complete this on the Chrome Dev site:
https://developer.chrome.com/extensions/crx
It looks as if you need to create a zip file, then add additional headers to the beginning of that file, then change the file extension from ".zip" to ".crx"
If serving this file from a web-server, you should use the header "application/x-chrome-extension" to make the Chrome browser understand this is an installable theme/app/extension.