Force Enable Extension Without Using Group Policy

[Vishal Jaiswal]

Hello All,

We have our chrome extension present in web store. 
Our Enterprise customer's use group policy to force enable this extension. 
Now customer's are asking if you can manage force installation as part of your installation process. 
I've gone through the ExtensionInstallForcelist registry, can we use it?
Also if there's any way to force enable extension on system's which are not part of Active Directory Domain ?


Thanks

[Patrick Kettner]

Hi Vishal

You can't force install an extension on a non managed device. The closest option I can think of would be if the individual user creates and installs their own policy on the device.

patrick

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[Vishal Jaiswal]

Hi Patrick,

Can we force enable it on managed systems as part of our software installation process? So that customers don't need to configure group policy themselves?

Thanks
Vishal

[Patrick Kettner]

Hi Vishal!

In theory anything is possible if you have your own installation. You can install extensions by updating windows registry keys or creating plists on macos, but unless they are installed via policy they will be disabled until the user enables them (it can't be forced installed). 

Would you be able to install a policy with your installation process?

patrick

[Vishal Jaiswal]

Hi Patrick,

Apologies for delayed response.

You mentioned that "  unless they are installed via policy they will be disabled until the user enables them ". I was testing with a few extensions including my own, I was using extensionInstallForceList registry, whenever I set this registry,  the extensions were getting force enabled in chrome, and as we remove the key the extension gets removed. All this is happening without a need to enable them separately from the chrome extension page.  This behavior is conflicting with what you said or if I did anything incorrectly?

Q)- Would you be able to install a policy with your installation process? 
A)- We can but that depends on  how much time and effort this will take. Any other possible way?

Thanks 
-Vishal

[Vishal Jaiswal]

Hi Patrick,

Need your help with the query above.

Thanks
Vishal

[Patrick Kettner]

Hello Vishal,

By updating extensionInstallForceList, you are installing them via policy. So what you are seeing is in line with what I said. 

> Any other possible way?

Unfortunately, no

best

patrick