In this tutorial, we will be showing you how to install the Google Chrome web browser to an Ubuntu operating system.
Google Chrome is one of the most popular web browsers in the world across both desktop and mobile devices. It has also become the basis of many other web browsers such as Microsoft Edge.
Despite being a popular web browser, Chrome isn’t available from the Ubuntu repository because it is proprietary and closed-source software. While there is an open-source alternative called Chromium, it doesn’t have the same set of functionalities.
Although not part of the default package repository installing Chrome is a straightforward process, we only need to download the package directly from their servers.
The following sections will show you how to download and install Chrome on your Ubuntu device. These steps for installing Chrome will work on all supported versions of Ubuntu, including 22.04, 20.04, and 18.04.
Installing Google Chrome to your Ubuntu System
Over the next few steps, we will install Google Chrome on your Ubuntu system. It is a fairly straightforward process but one we will complete within the terminal.
While you can install Chrome from the desktop interface, it is far faster and easier to do it from the terminal.
To open the terminal on Ubuntu, you can press CTRL + ALT + T on your keyboard.
1. Before downloading and installing Chrome, we need to perform a package list update using the command below.
We need to perform a package list update to install any packages that Chrome might require on Ubuntu.
2. Next, we need to ensure that we have the “wget” package installed on the system.
Typically, “wget” comes bundled with Ubuntu, but we should ensure it is installed by using the following command.
sudo apt install wget3. We can now move on to download the latest stable version of Chrome for Linux to our Ubuntu system.
To download this package, we will be using the wget command. This command allows us to easily download files like Chrome to our system from the terminal.
Download the latest version of Google Chrome to your Ubuntu system using the following command.
Please note that Google Chrome is only available as a 64-bit package. Therefore, if you are using a 32-bit version of Ubuntu, you will not be able to use Chrome.
4. Once the package finishes downloading to your system, we can now use “apt” to install the Chrome package we just downloaded.
Use the following command in the terminal to install Google Chrome to your Ubuntu system.
5. Once the installation process completes, we can do a little bit of cleanup by deleting the ".deb” package we downloaded earlier. It is no longer required as we now have Google Chrome installed on Ubuntu.
We can use the rm command to delete this file, as shown below.
Running Google Chrome on your Ubuntu System
Now that we have downloaded and installed the Google Chrome package to Ubuntu, we can launch it.
There are two different ways that you can launch the software, and that is through the desktop interface or by using the terminal.
Opening Chrome using the Desktop Interface
Let us start by showing you how to find Google Chrome on Ubuntu now that you have installed it. The following steps will be straightforward if you are already familiar with Ubuntu.
1. To find Google Chrome on Ubuntu, you will want to start by opening the activities screen.
You can open this screen by CLICKING the top or bottom left of the screen.
2. Within the search box at the top of the screen, search for “chrome” or “google chrome” (1.).
As you type, Ubuntu will immediately search the system. You should eventually see “Google Chrome” (2.) show up as an option.
You can now LEFT-CLICK “Google Chrome” to open it on your Ubuntu device. Alternatively, follow the next step if you want to add Chrome to the favorites bar (Left side of the screen).
3. If you RIGHT-CLICK the Google Chrome icon (1.), you will get a selection of options.
To add Chrome to the favorites bar, CLICK the “Add to Favorites” option (2.) on the pop-up menu.
4. When you open Chrome on Ubuntu for the first time, you will see a message across the top of the window asking you to set it as the default.
If you want to use Google Chrome as your default web browser, CLICK the “Set as default” button. Alternatively, CLICK the “X” to close the message.
5. You have successfully opened the Google Chrome web browser on Ubuntu.
You can now put this web browser to use by checking out some great websites like ours.
Running Chrome from the Terminal
It is also possible to launch Google Chrome by using an effortless command within the terminal.
If you are comfortable using the terminal, this can be much faster than clicking through various elements on the desktop.
1. To launch Google Chrome on Ubuntu from the terminal, you must run the following command.
2. After running the above command, you should now have Chrome running on your system.
One advantage of running Chrome like this is that you can control the application using its various terminal options. Such as, if you added “--kiosk” as an argument, it will launch Chrome in kiosk mode.
How to Set Chrome as the Default Browser on Ubuntu
If for some reason, you never got a message within Chrome asking you to set it as the default browser, it is possible to do this through Ubuntu’s settings page.
1. Start by opening up the settings page on your device.
On Ubuntu 22.04, this is as easy as CLICKING in the top-right corner (1.) and then CLICKING the “Settings” option (2.). On older versions, this may just be shown as just a cog icon.
2. With the settings window now open, SCROLL down till you see “Default applications” (1.) and CLICK it.
You can now use the box next to “Web:” to set Ubuntu’s default web browser to “Google Chrome” (2.).
Conclusion
At this point in the tutorial, you should now have Google Chrome installed on Ubuntu.
Chrome is one of the best web browsers, known for its fast JavaScript engine and great extensibility.
Please comment below if you have had issues with getting Chrome running on your device.
Be sure to check out our many other Ubuntu tutorials. We also have numerous other tutorials that cover the normal usage of Linux.
