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howto: Chrome on Mac with 6 awesome extensions

Okay, so it’s actually going to be Chromium, not Chrome. Currently, the Mac version of Chrome doesn’t support extensions. I did find some links that claim to be able to make it work with a developer channel release, but I couldn’t get it going.

I really, really, wanted Chrome working with extensions on my Mac, so I spent some more time digging around randomly. Eventually, I did find a comment on the page linked above indicating certain builds of Chromium would work with extensions. Hrmmm.

I don’t know if what follows is really a “howto”, but this is how I got things working nicely for me.

Okay, so what’s the difference between Chrome and Chromium really? According to wikipedia:

Chromium implements the same feature set as Chrome, but without Google branding and automatic updates, and it has a slightly different logo

Alright, sweet. So, let’s get to installing Chromium. It took me a while to ferret this out, but the Mac snapshot builds site is here, and this is the particular build that I installed. It works for me, but your mileage may vary.

1. Download the zip
   • unzip if it’s not automatic
2. Drag Chromium.app to your Applications folder
3. Launch Chromium.app

And, this time, when you go to the Chrome extensions site, you won’t see that horrible greyed out Install button.

On to the extensions! These aren’t necessarily the best or most innovative out there, but they’re the ones I’ve found most useful so far.

Speed Tracer

Speed Tracer is probably the coolest extension I’m using, and the most involved to get working. It gives a great interface to profiling web applications. The video on the extension page a much better job of explaining how to use it than I can, but trust me it makes a great addition to the already cool developer tools in Chrome.

The trick to get it working comes from having to start Chrome(ium) with the command line flag of --enable-extension-timeline-api. To do so

1. Shut down Chromium
2. Open Terminal and head over to /Applications/Chromium.app/Contents/MacOS
3. Move the Chromium binary to Chromium-app
4. Create a Chromium shell script with:
5. Make it executable
6. Say any favorite incantations, and start Chromium back up.
7. Go hit the install link for Speed Tracer and get to playing around.

Chromed Bird

Chromed Bird is a seriously awesome twitter client. I don’t have a lot of experience with the browser-based twitter clients, since I mainly use a desktop reader, and an iPhone reader. However, it does solve one of my big pet peeves with some other readers, in that it lets me know when I have unread messages and how many are unread.

Session Manager

Session Manager builds upon Chrome(ium)’s ability to save tabs when you crash or exit (in Preferences), and allows you to save set’s of open sites that you can restore. The only trick is remembering that it won’t add to the current open tabs, but replace them. It seems terribly handy for launching all the sites I normally use at work in one go, but not having them auto-launch at home.

Aviary Screen Capture

Aviary Screen Capture is a simple way to do screen captures of the visible portion of a loaded web page. It also has links to the other Aviary services. Once full page capture is there, this will be even better.

Google Reader Notifier (by Google)

Google Reader Notifier is pretty straightforward, and useful. It lets me know how many unread posts have made it to my reader and lets me read them.

Google Voice Notifier (by Google)

Google Voice Notifier. Just like Reader Notifier, this one is pretty simple. Shows me unread things from Google Voice and gives me a way to get to them.

What I’m missing

Delicious

I need some serious delicious.com integration. I have a wealth of bookmarks I’ve collected for years and the current extensions don’t cut it. There are a couple that allow me to bookmark things easily, but I need delicious to take over my bookmarks in a sensible way.

1Password

There is LastPass. And if I weren’t so happy with 1Password on my other browsers, I’d actually give it a shot. 1Password is awesome and you can’t make me switch.

Google Apps/Email

I really wish I had a Gmail notifier that worked with Google Apps accounts, and something similar for my calendar. I have some desktop apps that fill the void but more support along those lines would make me very, very happy. I’d also like to see something that lets me easily switch between Google profiles without logging out. I suspect with the per-tab process architecture, something along those lines should be possible in Chrome.

In summary

I’m pretty happy that I took the time to tinker around with Chromium today. I was pretty unimpressed with the Chrome beta release and not having the ability to install extensions. I’m still seeing some odd behavior from time to time, but the browser definitely shows a lot of promise.

I’m by no means a Chrome(ium) expert after going through this, but if you run into problems trying to replicate this setup, let me know in the comments and I’ll do my best to help out.