chromium for windows installer

Easily install and update Chromium for Windows

What does it do?

When this package is installed, you'll get a command line tool update-chromium, which follows these steps:

• It downloads the latest 64bit chromium development build (as zip) from the official source (no third-party build):
  • https://www.googleapis.com/download/storage/v1/b/chromium-browser-snapshots/o/Win_x64%2F
• It removes %LOCALAPPDATA%\Chromium\ except for %LOCALAPPDATA%\Chromium\User Data
• It extracts the chromium build into %LOCALAPPDATA%\Chromium\

Installation via NPM

• To install the installer (this package), run:
  • npm install -g chromium-windows
  • This will not install chromium itself!
• To install or update chromium run:
  • update-chromium

Important: The last step needs to be manually executed by you in regular intervals, as there is no background task checking for updates!

Set up environment variables

The developer build for chromium will nag about missing api keys. To fix this, you'll need to set 3 environment variables:

• GOOGLE_API_KEY => no
• GOOGLE_DEFAULT_CLIENT_ID => no
• GOOGLE_DEFAULT_CLIENT_SECRET => no

There are 3 ways to do this:

1. Set them globally in the system properties dialog.

• Open the "System Properties" dialog
• Select the "Advanced" tab
• Press the "Environment variables..." button
• Add new user or system variables as seen above

2. Set them globally via setx

This essentially does the same thing as above (for user variables).

Open a terminal and enter:

setx GOOGLE_API_KEY "no"
setx GOOGLE_DEFAULT_CLIENT_ID "no"
setx GOOGLE_DEFAULT_CLIENT_SECRET "no"

3. Configure a custom chromium shortcut like this

This is good if you only want to set this for this instance of chromium (or if you're not allowed to change user/system environment variables)

Set this as target:

C:\Windows\System32\cmd.exe /c "SET GOOGLE_API_KEY=no && SET GOOGLE_DEFAULT_CLIENT_ID=no && SET GOOGLE_DEFAULT_CLIENT_SECRET=no && START /D ^"%LOCALAPPDATA%\Chromium\" chrome.exe"

And this as "Start in":

%LOCALAPPDATA%\Chromium

Report isssues

Something not working quite as expected? Do you need a feature that has not been implemented yet? Check the issue tracker and add a new one if your problem is not already listed. Please try to provide a detailed description of your problem, including the steps to reproduce it.

Contribute

Awesome! If you would like to contribute with a new feature or submit a bugfix, fork this repo and send a pull request. Please, make sure all the unit tests are passing before submitting and add new ones in case you introduced new features.

License

The chromium windows installer has been released under the zlib/libpng license, meaning you can use it free of charge, without strings attached in commercial and non-commercial projects. Credits are appreciated but not mandatory.