google chrome - Re-enabling extension installs

Question

I found the new change that you can't install Chrome extensions/userscripts without saving them and dragging them into Chrome quite annoying. As such I have set forth to revert this to the old way it was.

I read the documentation here: http://www.chromium.org/administrators/policy-list-3#ExtensionInstallSources that says to add a registry key and so I have done, as shown below. However when attempting to install an extension I still get an error that they can only be installed from the Chrome webstore. Did I add the registry entries wrong or something?

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREPoliciesGoogleChromeExtensionInstallSources]
"1"="http://*"
"2"="https://*"

Answer 1

This answer is obsolete as of Chrome 36

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Instead of editing the registry, you can also make Chrome to behave in the old way via the --enable-easy-off-store-extension-install flag.

Under Windows, create a shortcut to your Chrome executable. Then edit the shortcut, and append --enable-easy-off-store-extension-install to "Target". See the screenshot below:

Some observations:

• I've added the --enable-easy-off-store-extension-install flag after chrome.exe.
• After starting Chrome, I visited a website that links to a .crx file that is not hosted in the Chrome web store.
• Because of the flag, Chrome 20 doesn't show the "Extensions, apps, and user scripts can only be added from the Chrome Web Store" message any more. Instead (see bottom), Chrome asks me whether it's OK to install the extension - exactely as before.

This command line switch also works for Chromium/Chrome, under Linux and OSX.