Download Tools: How To Get Chrome To Support Installing GNOME Shell Extensions From The GNOME Extensions Repository

Wednesday, April 12, 2017

How To Get Chrome To Support Installing GNOME Shell Extensions From The GNOME Extensions Repository

[Quick tip for GNOME Shell users] By default, users are able to install GNOME Shell extensions from extensions.gnome.org only by using Firefox or Epiphany (Web) browsers.

Until GNOME Software will be able to install and update GNOME Shell extensions, Google Chrome / Chromium users are a bit left out, at least as far as the default experience goes.

However, there is an easy way of installing GNOME Shell extensions using Chrome: with the help of a Chrome extension and a native connector that provides integration with GNOME Shell and its extensions repository, extensions.gnome.org.

Google Chrome GNOME Extension Repository integration

extensions.gnome.org integration for Google Chrome

For Ubuntu, this Chrome integration for GNOME Shell is available in a PPA, as a package called "chrome-gnome-shell", which includes the native GS-Chrome connector. The browser extension should be installed automatically upon installing this package and running Google Chrome / Chromium.

In my test, using the "chrome-gnome-shell" package brought support for installing extensions from extensions.gnome.org (and accessing their preferences), not only to Google Chrome and Chromium, but also to Vivaldi browser. Unfortunately, I it doesnt seem to work with Opera.

Vivaldi GNOME Extension Repository integration

extensions.gnome.org Chrome integration also works with Vivaldi

The "GNOME Shell integration for Chrome" Ubuntu PPA is only available for Ubuntu 14.04. Add the PPA and install it using the following commands:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ne0sight/chrome-gnome-shell
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install chrome-gnome-shell

For Ubuntu (GNOME) versions newer than 14.04, you can download the deb from HERE and install it manually. I tested it under Ubuntu GNOME 16.04 (with GNOME Shell 3.18) and I didnt encounter any issues. The package might also work in Debian, but I didnt test it.

Once installed, restart Chromium / Google Chrome and you should be able to install extensions from https://extensions.gnome.org (just like with Firefox and Epiphany, you need to use GNOME Shell to be able to install extensions).

For other Linux distributions, check out the GNOME Shell integration for Chrome wiki installation page.

Available link for download