Thursday, January 17, 2013

How to install Chrome extension (.crx) from local disk

Since Chrome 21 was introduced users are no longer allowed to install extensions from local disk and all you'll get is a message saying extensions can only be installed from the Chrome Web Store. Well nice security feature, but as all other good thing this one has a drawback too which can luckily be fixed on a very easy way.
Somehow I started to use Chrome or better to say CoolNovo (Chrome without all the Google's watching you) fork more and more as Chrome's extensions were starting to catch up with the Firefox ones (yes I'm a real extensions freak) and not to be to humble CoolNovo/Chrome is much faster than Firefox. But I better get back on tracks with Chrome extensions before its too late and I end up defining my relationship towards Firefox ;-)
Anyway I installed extension named LastPass which is a great add-on if you need to keep track of a lot passwords and logins. It would be even better if it was an open source project (just for security reasons), but I find it useful in its current state too and if you're so concerned about LastPass hiding something feel free to try KeePass. But for some reason LastPass started to grunge and repeatedly ask me to install LastPass with binaries to be able to use it in CoolNovo/Chrome. OK, I said let's try that even I already had it installed. I thought I probably missed something last time I've installed it. Don't get too confused as LastPass can be installed as an extension or as all-in-wonder executable.
But since I'm obviously using CoolNovo when I started LastPass binary installaion package it just didn't offer me an option to install LastPass for CoolNovo/Chrome. OK, I said if installer won't let me have it I'll go to LastPass download page and specifically select LastPass for Chrome extension which I did. Now I ended up with lpchrome_win.crx extension on my local disk and thought I've solved all my problems as I will just open it in CoolNovo and it wil automatically be recognized and installed. Well as I've already wrote in the introduction it just didn't happen and moreover trying to open .crx extension from local disk by calling CoolNovo/Chrome will just end up with duplicating the extension file you're trying to open.
OK, enough said, while I was wondering how to open it I ended with my extensions page in CoolNovo/Chrome opened (chrome://chrome/extensions/) and have accidentally dragged saved file just a bit over it when something unexpected happened - on the center of the extension page I got a dropzone with message "Drop to install". Nice. And that's how I solved my problem and managed to install Chrome extension from my local drive.

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