With the recent changes in installing chrome extensions, Whenever you try to install an extension from the source other than chrome webstore it won’t get installed and instead it shows a message saying
Extensions,apps, and user scripts can only be added from the Chrome Webstore
Why this change ?
It is been stated as to protect users from installing malicious extensions, apps from the third party websites. According to one of the developer comment in code.google.com they have overlooked the popular user scripts in installation and implemented a fix to resolve the issue.
This change was made to protect users. Off-store extensions have become a popular attack vector for compromising users of larger sites (e.g. Facebook). Since the trend is only getting worse, we’re putting the power back in the user’s hands by allowing them to control where extensions are installed from. By default, the Chrome Webstore is the only source, but users and administrators will be able to add other safe sources as they see fit.
But I must say in the name of protecting users it is not a good way to stop all the extensions, scripts, apps to get installed. Many popular scripts from userscripts.org cannot be installed however we have work around to fix this problem.
Work Around 1 : Drag and drop the extensions to chrome extensions page ( chrome://chrome/extensions/ )
1. To continue installing the extension just navigate to “Extensions” page by selecting “Extensions” in “Tool” menu.
2. Now Just download the extension that you want to install and Just drop the downloaded extensions on to this page, Immediately when you started dragging it says “Drop to Install”, Some times the user scripts instead of getting installed they might show up the code in browser because you haven’t dragged it properly.
3. Once you drop the extension it asks you to confirm the installation of new extension just say “Add” to it to install.
Work Around 2: Passing “–enable-easy-off-store-extension-install” Chrome Arguments
If you are a person who installs the chrome extensions very frequently from other than chrome webstore then adding a start up parameter to google chrome will let you install extensions from other than chrome webstore.
To add the start up parameter right click on the chrome shortcut through which you open chrome and hit on “properties”. Assuming that you open it through taskbar here is the way to do it.
1. right click on the chrome icon in taskbar and it will show the following options.
2. Now Right Click on the “Google chrome” option and hit on “Properties” option.
3. It will show up the properties window which has the target path for executable chrome application, Here we will add the “–enable-easy-off-store-extension-install” parameter immediately after chrome.exe so that it will take the given parameters as arguments.
4. Once you are done adding the parameters start chrome, If you have given any wrong syntax in arguments chrome will say that it cannot recognize the arguments else it will start normally. Now try installing an extension from a different source other than chrome webstore it will show the warning message but it should allow you to install.
Work Around 3 : Changing Google Chrome Policies
Changing policy settings in chrome will let you install extensions from a different source. If you install extensions from one or two sources then changing policy settings will let you install these extensions easily. For example if you want to allow an extension from http://www.chromeextensions.org try adding following a key at this location.
[code]
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREPoliciesGoogleChromeExtensionInstallSources]
"1"="http://www.chromeextensions.org/*"
[/code]
here is the registry key for the same and if you want to add a different source just open this registry key with notepad and change the number to 2 and change the value to your source website.
Hope You enjoyed reading this article.
