Google is Bringing Chrome Extensions to Android, But Not As You’d Want Them

Chrome has had dominion in the browser space for over a decade, but we can all agree that some of its alternatives are far more feature-rich. For example, Brave comes with Tor built in, Firefox is more secure, Opera is much more customizable, and more. Chrome for Android also lacks extensions, but that might change soon. That’s because Google is developing a version of Chrome with extension support for Android.

Google Chrome‘s Desktop Android builds have been spotted many times before. According to Android Authority‘s Mishaal Rahman, these Chrome Android Desktop builds were available for download before, but you couldn’t run extensions. However, a recent code change makes it possible to install and use extensions on these desktop builds.

After installing the Chrome Desktop builds, Mishaal reports extensions like Dark Reader, Keepa, and uBlock Origin worked flawlessly. However, there were some extensions that were unusable.

Also, there’s no way to install extensions via the Chrome Web Store. And installing extensions on these builds requires dragging and dropping the CRX files. We were able to install and use the extensions on our devices as well. Bitwarden did not work, but Dark Reader did.

Unfortunately, these Chrome builds won’t arrive on your Android phone. Rather, they’re for Android Desktop. Google intends to merge ChromeOS in Android in the near future. So, these builds could probably be for Android Desktop.

That said, if you want to try out Chrome builds with extension support, you can download them from Google’s server or get started with the latest version. While extension support may never arrive on Chrome on Android phones, browsers like Edge and Firefox already support them and are preparing to expand extension support.

What are your thoughts about Chrome extensions on Android. Should Google consider bringing them to Android phones? Let us know in the comments below.