Different web browser on Chromebook?

Hi i need detail guide to install different web browser on my chromebook any one have detail guide then plz help me.

hi @akhtarali

doesn’t your chromebook has a google play store?
install from it.

these are limited functionality i want to install like desktop ver not mobile
sorry for bad english

Hi @akhtarali, welcome to the freeCodeCamp forums, hope you find what your looking for! :smiley:

Chromebooks obviously come with Chrome, which is the main browser, and what the OS is based off of. If you want to install another browser to use, there are really only 2 sensible paths.

  1. Install from the Play store to get an Android based version.
  2. Install the Linux (beta) and install almost any browser via the Linux installation

Both of these options have somewhat major pitfalls. Most Chromebooks have limited memory, and having support for Android and or Linux may take up significant amounts of HD space. Installing the browser app itself will take up more space, and may cause problems on Chromebooks with limited HD capacity in the first place. Along with this the Chrome browser is the most performant option available due to the entire OS being built around it. You wont get better performance from any other option,due to the limited performance capabilities of most Chromebooks in the first place.

Installing from the Play store means you get a browser usually built for phone screens so it may scale horribly on a Chromebook screen, but it should work fairly well and get the job done.

Installing via Linux requires a little more experience working around the Linux terminal, but its totally doable and gives you more freedom. However, running GUI apps thru the Linux may result in worse performance, this is due to what I assume are issues with Linux graphic drivers (not all Chromebook models even have GPU acceleration for Linux apps,last I checked), limited hardware performance and multiple layers of virtualization used.

There are other more extreme options like dual booting with Linux (don’t do this if you care about your Chromebooks security) but I do not recommend doing this just to get another browser.

Generally though, I don’t see much reason to install another browser on a Chromebook beyond novelty. The primary reason Id use another browser is privacy concerns, but then don’t buy a Google product if your concerned about Google.

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Firefox, Brave and Samsung Internet that are not just optimized for the pc design but remarkably they work efficiently enough on the Chromebook. Therefore, you can install.

To set up Firefox on your Chromebook, you first have to allow Linux on the Chromebook. For this, open up the Chrome OS settings, click on Linux (Beta) inside the sidebar and click on the “Activate” button next to the Linux option.

Now click the Install button in the pop up which shows up. After Linux is set up, you can view a terminal in the application drawer inside the Linux folder.

Firefox ESR is currently available in the Chromebook repository. In the terminal, simply type the below text and press Enter to install Firefox

Install the ESR version to install dependencies with this command.

sudo apt install firefox-esr

Now, uninstall the ESR version, so that you can install standard Firefox.

sudo apt remove firefox-esr

Now all you have to do is run this command to install the standard version of Firefox.

sudo apt install iceweasel

To install Brave on Chromebook, first run this command to update all dependencies

Pro tip: – To paste into the terminal, you can use the keyboard shortcut: – Crtl + Shift + V
(Ctrl + V, does not work on the terminal)

sudo apt install apt-transport-https curl

curl -s https://brave-browser-apt-release.s3.brave.com/brave-core.asc | sudo apt-key --keyring /etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/brave-browser-release.gpg add -

echo "deb [arch=amd64] https://brave-browser-apt-release.s3.brave.com/ stable main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/brave-browser-release.list

sudo apt update

sudo apt install brave-browser

if you face some error join the discussion here

hi im sorry,

what function did you mentioned?
the devtool? inspect element? console?

i don’t know if this is relevant for you or not, but i have a tablet and installed a “SPCK Editor” from playstore, it’s like a ‘clone’ of VS code but with limit.
i learns javascript there, because it has built in inspect element and console like chrome devtool.