Install Chrome extension form outside the Chrome Web Store

Question

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

User · Accepted Answer

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.

User · Answer

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 ExtensionInstallWhitelist  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 ExtensionInstallWhitelist   1   aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa   2   bbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbb    EDIT  actually  Chromium docs also indicate how to do it for other OS

[google-chrome] Install Chrome extension form outside the Chrome Web Store

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