Chromium - ArchWiki

# Chromium

Related articles

- Chromium/Tips and tricks
- Browser plugins
- Firefox
- Opera

Chromium is an open-source graphical web browser from Google, based on the Blink rendering engine.

## Installation

The open-source project, Chromium, can be installed with the chromium package. You can also find:

- chromium-devAUR - the development version
- chromium-continuous-binAUR - the automatically tested nightly version
- chromium-snapshot-binAUR - the untested nightly version

The derived browser, Google Chrome, bundled with Flash Player and Widevine EME (for e.g. Netflix), can be installed with the google-chromeAUR package. You can also find:

- google-chrome-betaAUR - the beta version
- google-chrome-devAUR - the development version

Tip: See these two articles for an explanation of the differences between Stable/Beta/Dev, as well as Chromium vs. Chrome and an explanation of the version numbering.

### Inox

Inox is a privacy-focused patchset which disables Google services, proprietary features, prevents "calling home" and unhides all extensions. Flags are stored in `inox-flags.conf`. See this GitHub project for details. Otherwise, instructions regarding Chromium apply equally.

- inox-binAUR - prebuilt binaries.
- inoxAUR - Allows disabling additional features in PKGBUILD. Takes a long time to build, regardless of your CPU.

## Configuration

### Set Chromium as default browser

This behaviour is related to xdg-open: see xdg-open#Set the default browser. For more information about the topic in general, see Default applications.

### File associations

This behaviour is related to xdg-open: see xdg-open#Configuration. For more information about the topic in general, see Default applications.

### Flash Player plugin

Note: Chromium no longer supports the Netscape plugin API (NPAPI), so flashplugin from the repositories cannot be used.

Pepper Flash is the Flash Player plugin, using the new Pepper plugin API. It is co-developed by Google and Adobe, and distributed bundled with Google Chrome.

To install Pepper Flash for Chromium, install the chromium-pepper-flashAUR package. If you want the development version, install the chromium-pepper-flash-devAUR package instead.

Make sure the plugin is enabled in `chrome://plugins` and restart chromium via its menu.

### Widevine Content Decryption Module plugin

Widevine is Google's Encrypted Media Extensions (EME) Content Decryption Module (CDM). It is used to watch premium video content such as Netflix. It comes bundled with Chrome.

To install the Widevine CDM for Chromium, install the chromium-widevineAUR package.

Make sure the plugin is enabled in `chrome://plugins`.

### PDF viewer plugin

Chromium and Google Chrome are bundled with the Chromium PDF Viewer plugin, so installing a third-party plugin is not required.

If you prefer another implementation, disable the Chromium PDF Viewer plugin in `chrome://plugins`, and install one of the following alternatives:

#### PDF.js

See the main article: Browser plugins#PDF.js

### Certificates

Chromium uses NSS for certificate management. Certificates can be managed in `Settings` → `Show advanced settings...` → `Manage Certificates...`.

## Tips and tricks

See the main article: Chromium tweaks

## Troubleshooting

### Constant freezes under KDE

Uninstall libcanberra-pulse. See: BBS#1228558.

### Fonts

Note: Chromium does not fully integrate with fontconfig/GTK/Pango/X/etc. due to its sandbox. For more information, see the Linux Technical FAQ.

#### Font rendering issues in PDF plugin

To fix the font rendering in some PDFs one has to install the ttf-liberation package, otherwise the substituted font causes text to run into other text. This was reported on the chromium bug tracker by an Arch user.

### Force 3D acceleration

Warning: Disabling the rendering list may cause unstable behaviour, including crashes of the host. See the bug reports in `chrome://gpu`.

First, make sure you have all the required packages as explained in VDPAU. Then, to force 3D rendering, enable the flag "Override software rendering list" in `chrome://flags`. Check if it is working in `chrome://gpu`. This may also alleviate tearing issues with the radeon driver.

### WebGL

Warning: Catalyst does not support the `GL_ARB_robustness` extension. When using this driver, it is possible that a malicious site could use WebGL to perform a DoS attack on your graphic card.

Chromium will sometimes disable WebGL with certain graphics card configurations. To remedy this, enter `chrome://flags` into the URL bar and disable the Disable WebGL flag. Alternatively, pass the command-line flag `--enable-webgl` to Chromium in the terminal.

There is also the possibility that your graphics card has been blacklisted by Chromium. See #Force 3D acceleration.

If you are using Chromium with Bumblebee, WebGL might crash due to GPU sandboxing. In this case, you can disable GPU sandboxing with `optirun chromium --disable-gpu-sandbox`.

If none of the above solves your problem, you may be able to visit `chrome://gpu/` for additional debugging info.

### Distorted GUI

Chromium's graphical interface may look unsightly, distorted and zoomed in on high-DPI displays. To disable any attempts to scale display according to device DPI, use `--force-device-scale-factor=1`.

### "Search Google for this image" broken

This seems to be a general Chromium for Linux bug, which has been reported upstream: [1].

Version 46.0.2490.71-2 fixes this issue.

## See also

- Chromium homepage
- Google Chrome release notes
- Chrome web store
- Differences between Chromium and Google Chrome
- List of Chromium command-line switches

Category:

- Web browser