GNOME Shell integration for Chrome Installation Guide

Distro packages

The easiest way to install extension and connector is use your distro's favorite package manager.

If there is no package in your distro you can install extension via Chrome web store and native connector using cmake.

For Firefox you should manually install extension from Mozilla Addons site. Please note that Firefox is supported since connector version 8.

Opera was supported since connector version 7 up to version 10.1. However extension was deactivated at Opera addons website without any technical explanation.

Arch Linux

Package is available in the Arch Linux User Repository (AUR): chrome-gnome-shell.

To install package type:

$ git clone https://aur.archlinux.org/chrome-gnome-shell.git
$ cd chrome-gnome-shell
$ makepkg -si

Debian Linux

Package is available in Stable: chrome-gnome-shell.

To install package type:

$ sudo apt-get install chrome-gnome-shell

Fedora Linux

Package is available in Fedora 26 and newer: chrome-gnome-shell.

To install it type:

# dnf install chrome-gnome-shell

With older versions use Copr region51/chrome-gnome-shell:

# dnf copr enable region51/chrome-gnome-shell
# dnf install chrome-gnome-shell

Gentoo Linux

Ebuild is available in main tree. Just type as root user:

# emerge -av gnome-extra/chrome-gnome-shell

Ubuntu Linux

Package is available in Universe repositories

To install package type:

$ sudo apt-get install chrome-gnome-shell

FreeBSD

FreeBSD is supported since version 10 of browser extension.

Cmake installation

First of all make sure following dependencies are installed:

• Build time
  • Python 2.7+ or 3.x (also runtime dependency)
  • Cmake 2.8 (or newer)

  • Coreutils

  • jq

• Runtime

  • GNOME Shell

  • PyGObject

  • Python Requests 2.x

  • DBus

Then clone source repository or download latest release tarball. To make git clone type:

$ git clone https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/chrome-gnome-shell.git

Web extension sources located in "extension" folder. Refer Google Chrome documentation for information about installation of unpacked extension.

All commands must be issued from the root of cloned repository.

1. Create build folder and go to it:

   $ mkdir build
   $ cd build

2. Run cmake to create makefiles:

   $ cmake -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/usr -DBUILD_EXTENSION=OFF ../

3. Install connector:

   $ sudo make install

Troubleshooting

Problem:

• You had uninstalled native connector package. Web extension still installed in browser and you can not uninstall it because it "installed by enterprise policy".

Resolution:

• Your package manager did not uninstalled policy files. You should remove them manually:

  # rm /etc/opt/chrome/policies/managed/chrome-gnome-shell.json
  # rm /etc/chromium/policies/managed/chrome-gnome-shell.json

  If you had installed native connector via package manager you also should report this issue to package maintainer.

Problem:

• You are using Firefox and getting high CPU usage and crash when closing browser.

Resolution:

• It is the Firefox bug 1349874, which should be fixed around Firefox 55.