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
Related
I've written an extension for Google Chrome that will be released with the next version of our product. I want to understand what properties, paths for extraction, registry entries, etc. should I provide the installer of my product so that the end user doesn't have to install the extension on their own manually, and the installer does the complete job of installing the extension, and also notifies the user that the extension has been installed. As of now, the code that I have written is placed in a folder, and I use the "Load Unpackaged Extension" to load the extension. What should I do to achieve the aforementioned task?
Google's current policy on installing extensions via the registry (for Windows machines) is this:
Only extensions from the Google Extension Gallery (or Chrome Web Store - CWS) can be installed via the registry.
See this link - https://developer.chrome.com/extensions/external_extensions - for information on how this can be done. Keep in mind the following:
-This technique will still pop-up a msgbox to the user. its not completely silent.
-When using this technique, if the user subsequently removes the extension from her Chrome, the extension gets "blacklisted" on that chrome and will not re-auto-install until the user re-install it
manually. refer to Auto-installing a google chrome extension won't work ! for details.
Chrome has a couple ways of installing extensions programmatically:
http://www.chromium.org/administrators/pre-installed-extensions
Edit: yes, this policy has changed by now, as FuzzyAmi points out.
If you're using GNU/Linux, this is how you pre-install an extension from the chrome web store for all users:
/etc/chromium/policies/managed/yourextension_policy.json
‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾
{
"ExtensionInstallForcelist": [
"yourextensionuniqueidentifiersup;https://clients2.google.com/service/update2/crx",
"yourextensionuniqueidentifiersup"
]
}
Reference
metamask-chrome - AUR
Background:
I manage an offline network of workstations.
I have written a chrome extension that needs to be in the browser for our webapp to function
I have published it through the chrome store (but not made it public)
Question:
How do I install this extension without the internet
What I've tried:
Windows GPO: Requires the update URL to be http://clients2.google.com/service/update2/crx
Windows Registry: same URL problem
Unpacked extensions: prompts users, requires developer tools, and disables the extension when chrome is restarted.
install crx: disables the extension when chrome is restarted.
Any other ideas, or ways around this?
Chrome version 48.
I was able to do this on a regular chrome installation by doing the following:
Download the extension in crx format - how to download a crx file from the chrome web store for a given id
Unzip the crx file
I had to rename the _metadata folder to metadata
Open the chrome extensions page
Enable Developer mode
Click "Load unpacked extension..."
Select the unzipped folder
This worked for me when I needed to install Advanced REST client.
I have just:
Downloaded the add-on CRX file using http://crxextractor.com/
Opened the "extensions" page on Chrome.
Drag-and-dropped the CRX file onto the "extensions" page.
I got it to work actually, sadly forgot about this post until now.
I had the Business version installed as #gerardnimo suggested.
What I wound up doing is
1) setup and IIS server to serve both the CRX and the update xml. based on this guide. https://developer.chrome.com/extensions/autoupdate
2) Then i was able to install the extension via group policy.
Here is a thread that I've found. He suggests that you can use Google Chrome for Business.
Since September 3, 2015, Installing Chrome extensions off-line no longer work (and here ) due to Google trying to prevent malicious extensions being downloaded and installed. To install an extension off-line today, require you to install a signed pre-packaged full Chrome install, using Googles Chrome for Business. This functionality is controlled by a policy list. Or according to this post, you can use their Dev or Canary channels to run any extension. Their latest builds can be found here
I have developed a Chrome extension and I have packed it.
I sent my extension to some people to try it, but Chrome started to block extensions that it does not find in the store.
Is there any way to install my extension without getting blocked by Chrome?
EDIT
Is there any way to install extension as developer mode? I read that only extensions that installed in developer mode will not blocked.
For regular Windows users who are not skilled with computers, it is practically not possible to install and use extensions from outside the Chrome Web Store.
Users of other operating systems (Linux, Mac, Chrome OS) can easily install unpacked extensions (in developer mode).
Windows users can also load an unpacked extension, but they will always see an information bubble with "Disable developer mode extensions" when they start Chrome or open a new incognito window, which is really annoying. The only way for Windows users to use unpacked extensions without such dialogs is to switch to Chrome on the developer channel, by installing https://www.google.com/chrome/browser/index.html?extra=devchannel#eula.
Extensions can be loaded in unpacked mode by following the following steps:
Visit chrome://extensions (via omnibox or menu -> Tools -> Extensions).
Enable Developer mode by ticking the checkbox in the upper-right corner.
Click on the "Load unpacked extension..." button.
Select the directory containing your unpacked extension.
If you have a crx file, then it needs to be extracted first. CRX files are zip files with a different header. Any capable zip program should be able to open it. If you don't have such a program, I recommend 7-zip.
These steps will work for almost every extension, except extensions that rely on their extension ID. If you use the previous method, you will get an extension with a random extension ID. If it is important to preserve the extension ID, then you need to know the public key of your CRX file and insert this in your manifest.json. I have previously given a detailed explanation on how to get and use this key at https://stackoverflow.com/a/21500707.
For Windows, you can also whitelist your extension through Windows policies. The full steps are details in this answer, but there are quicker steps:
Create the registry key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Google\Chrome\ExtensionInstallAllowlist.
For each extension you want to whitelist, add a string value whose name should be a sequence number (starting at 1) and value is the extension ID.
For instance, in order to whitelist 2 extensions with ID aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa and bbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbb, create a string value with name 1 and value aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa, and a second value with name 2 and value bbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbb. This can be sum up by this registry file:
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Google\Chrome]
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Google\Chrome\ExtensionInstallAllowlist]
"1"="aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa"
"2"="bbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbb"
EDIT: actually, Chromium docs also indicate how to do it for other OS.
EDIT (06/05/2022): ExtensionInstallWhitelist is deprecated since Chrome 100, it has been renamed to ExtensionInstallAllowlist (answer updated)
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.
I've written an extension for Google Chrome that will be released with the next version of our product. I want to understand what properties, paths for extraction, registry entries, etc. should I provide the installer of my product so that the end user doesn't have to install the extension on their own manually, and the installer does the complete job of installing the extension, and also notifies the user that the extension has been installed. As of now, the code that I have written is placed in a folder, and I use the "Load Unpackaged Extension" to load the extension. What should I do to achieve the aforementioned task?
Google's current policy on installing extensions via the registry (for Windows machines) is this:
Only extensions from the Google Extension Gallery (or Chrome Web Store - CWS) can be installed via the registry.
See this link - https://developer.chrome.com/extensions/external_extensions - for information on how this can be done. Keep in mind the following:
-This technique will still pop-up a msgbox to the user. its not completely silent.
-When using this technique, if the user subsequently removes the extension from her Chrome, the extension gets "blacklisted" on that chrome and will not re-auto-install until the user re-install it
manually. refer to Auto-installing a google chrome extension won't work ! for details.
Chrome has a couple ways of installing extensions programmatically:
http://www.chromium.org/administrators/pre-installed-extensions
Edit: yes, this policy has changed by now, as FuzzyAmi points out.
If you're using GNU/Linux, this is how you pre-install an extension from the chrome web store for all users:
/etc/chromium/policies/managed/yourextension_policy.json
‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾
{
"ExtensionInstallForcelist": [
"yourextensionuniqueidentifiersup;https://clients2.google.com/service/update2/crx",
"yourextensionuniqueidentifiersup"
]
}
Reference
metamask-chrome - AUR