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I am running Linux Mint Debian edition (essentially Debian testing) and the Cinnamon desktop environment. Every time I launch google-chrome it asks to become the default browser. I have told it to do so in all ways I can think of but I still get this pop-up:

enter image description here

What I have tried:

  • Clicking on "Set as default" in the pop-up.

  • Making chrome the default in its settings:

    enter image description here

  • Using my desktop environment's (cinnamon) settings app to set it as default:

    enter image description here

  • Associating it with all relevant mimetypes in the various ways and files where such things are defined:

    $ xdg-mime query default text/html 
chrome.desktop

$ grep chrome .local/share/applications/mimeapps.list
text/html=chrome.desktop
x-scheme-handler/http=chrome.desktop
x-scheme-handler/https=chrome.desktop
x-scheme-handler/about=google-chrome.desktop
x-scheme-handler/about=google-chrome.desktop;
text/html=emacs.desktop;google-chrome.desktop;firefox.desktop;
x-scheme-handler/http=chrome.desktop;

$ grep chrome /usr/share/applications/defaults.list
application/xhtml+xml=google-chrome.desktop
text/html=google-chrome.desktop
text/xml=gedit.desktop;pluma.desktop;google-chrome.desktop
x-scheme-handler/http=google-chrome.desktop
x-scheme-handler/https=google-chrome.desktop

    In those files, I replaced all occurrences of firefox (my previous default) with google-chrome. No other browsers are defined anywhere in the file:

    $ grep -E 'firefox|opera|chromium' /usr/share/applications/defaults.list \ 
   .local/share/applications/mimeapps.list
$

  • Launching chrome as root in case that helps but it won't let me:

    enter image description here

  • Using Debian's alternatives system to set it as default:

    $ sudo update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/www-browser www-browser /usr/bin/google-chrome 1080
update-alternatives: using /usr/bin/google-chrome to provide /usr/bin/www-browser (www-browser) in auto mode

$ ls -l /etc/alternatives/www-browser
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 22 Jan 23 17:03 /etc/alternatives/www-browser -> /usr/bin/google-chrome

None of these seem to have any effect. Will no one rid me of this turbulent pop-up?

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  • 1
    16" mbp/macOS catalina. Can't get anything to work. Changing Preferences json check_default_browser: false will not work, and opening from the command with the --no-check-default-browser flag won't work either. If anyone has any ideas, let me know. I use FF by default. At this point, I'll just have to click "Keep Firefox" everytime I open chrome. Fortunately my machine+workload isn't that bad, I could just keep chrome open. Commented Mar 31, 2020 at 22:27
  • This is an old crbug thread on buggy --no-check-default-browser: bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=348426 - Please star this issue! (or link to a more precise crbug if you can find one) Commented Mar 31, 2020 at 22:29

9 Answers 9

Reset to default
29

For Chromium, when I choose "Don't ask again", Chromium stores the following setting in my ~/.config/chromium/Profile 1/Preferences file:

{
   "alternate_error_pages": {
      "enabled": false
   },
   "apps": {
      "shortcuts_have_been_created": true
   },
   "autofill": {
      "negative_upload_rate": 1.0,
      "positive_upload_rate": 1.0
   },
   "bookmark_bar": {
      "show_on_all_tabs": true
   },
   "bookmark_editor": {
      "expanded_nodes": [ "1" ]
   },
   "browser": {
      "check_default_browser": false,
      [...]

For standard Google Chrome:

  1. Close Chrome.
  2. In Terminal, paste open ~/Library/Application Support/Google/Chrome/Default/Preferences (and then hit enter)
  3. search for "browser":{​ and replace it with "browser":{"check_default_browser":false,

When you start chrome back up it shouldn't prompt you anymore.

Note:

The preferences setting seems to differ substantially between chrome versions. On Chrome-78.0 the setting

"browser":{"default_browser_infobar_last_declined":"13236762067983049"}

seems to work. I assume it simulates clicking the x.

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5
  • It's ~/.local/google-chrome/ instead of ~/.local/chromium/ in Linux Mint 20.1. Also, after editing Preferences, don't forget to validate JSON. Commented May 29, 2021 at 13:07
  • 1
    I have no idea how I will look like at November 6 of year 419458261, but this is a great answer! ;) Commented Feb 11, 2022 at 0:28
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    For future readers - neither of these solutions works for macOS Chrome-106. Commented Oct 17, 2022 at 8:28
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    They still don't work on macOS for Chrome 114. I ran this command to update my profile (non-default), which has updated the file as intended, but hasn't stopped the default browser pop-up. echo $(cat Preferences | jq '.browser += {"check_default_browser": false}' --monochrome-output --compact-output) > Preferences Commented Jun 6, 2023 at 12:35
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    Ironically, google already knows everything about you, so it shouldn't have to ask if you want something or not. it should already know that you don't want Chrome to be your default. /s Commented Apr 15, 2024 at 14:41
14

found the solution:

When you get the question again, don’t press the button that makes Chrome the default browser, but click on the far right of the bar on the X to make the bar disappear. Big chance it won’t come back.

via a manjaro forum post

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  • 4
    This seems to be irrelevant to terdon's question of 2014 (IIUC, he had an explicit "Don't ask again" button, which didn't work). But it's quite useful in 2019 (when there's no "Don't ask again" button, but "x" does the job). It's really quite counter-intuitive UX decision in Chrome/Chromium (I'd expect "x" to mean "hide this now", but not "forget it forever"). Commented Apr 24, 2019 at 15:37
  • 1
    solved my problem. Commented Jan 18, 2020 at 13:00
  • 1
    I tried this and I can confirm it works! Commented Aug 25, 2020 at 11:34
6

Here is a quick solution as worth as the one above I guess but different: Run in a terminal :

echo '# Disable set default browser
export CHROMIUM_FLAGS="$CHROMIUM_FLAGS --no-default-browser-check"' \
| sudo tee /etc/chromium.d/disable-set-default-browser

It will create a file that will launch Chromium without checking ... Very useful when the "don't ask again" question doesn't pop up :)

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2
  • Darn. That looked very promising, but there was no /etc/chromium.d/ directory on my Ubuntu system, and making it had no effect. Commented Jul 14, 2018 at 15:57
  • I am also using this --no-default-browser-check flag. Works like a charm! You can also create a launcher "desktop" file in ~/.local/share/applications/ so that when you click to open the app from launcher/favorites bar, it runs with this flag. See here for more about the desktop files: askubuntu.com/questions/461943/… Commented Aug 3, 2019 at 19:37
4

I was facing this issue on my work Macbook, turns out IT had set a managed policy called DefaultBrowserSettingEnabled to True.

It will override any command line arguments you try passing to it or any attempt to change the settings in your Chrome profile.

While I won't condone going against company policy, in this case it seems like a rather unnecessary check, as they allow us to use other browsers. The end result was that I would be forced to click the prompt every time I launched Chrome.

Since I'm using macOS some details will be different, so I'd recommend checking Google's documentation here: https://support.google.com/chrome/a/answer/2657289?hl=en#zippy=%2Cpolicies-set-for-users%2Cdefault-browser-check

With that aside, you can fix this by editing the policy plist yourself. I found mine in /Library/Managed Preferences/<username>/com.google.Chrome.plist, so I copied it to my downloads folder and opened it with this tool: https://github.com/corpnewt/ProperTree

I had to install python-tk with Homebrew, but afterwards the GUI worked fine, so I went ahead and switched DefaultBrowserSettingEnabled to False, saved the file and sudo cp'd it over the original.

After quitting (Command+Q just in case) and relaunching Chrome I was glad to not see the prompt anymore and the browser opened normally.

The documentation states that the default value (I'm guessing with the policy removed) it will restore the user's ability to make Chrome a default browser or not, but since I don't intend to do so I just set it to False.

Hope it helps.

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1
  • Holy COW, how did you figure this out! Only solution that worked for me. Commented Aug 7, 2024 at 19:03
2

I was unable to disable it, but after some research I was at least able to discover why I couldn't disable it. This is a work computer with a managed chrome policy. In the Chrome URL, I could view this policy by going to chrome://policy/. Scrolling through the list I found DefaultBrowserSettingEnabled with a value true. It seems its working as intended due to my work - not Chrome or Mac.

enter image description here

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0

Why manual edits?
Just "Click on "Don't ask again" in the pop-up." as indicated.

I don't see any indication in your question that you have tried that.

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  • 11
    It's 2018, and there is no such thing as "don't ask again". Commented Jan 5, 2018 at 16:17
  • 1
    That never worked and it isn't even an option now. Commented Jul 8, 2018 at 1:44
  • For what it's worth, this did actually work back when I asked the question, and I hadn't even tried clicking on the "don't ask again", since I wanted to make it the default, not to make it stop asking to be the default. Back in the day, this did manage to remove the prompt, it just didn't also make it default. Commented Apr 15, 2024 at 14:50
0

I managed to solve this, in Ubuntu 20.04, by editing ~/.local/share/applications/google-chrome.desktop. Look for Exec and add -no-default-browser-check to it, like this:

Exec=/usr/bin/google-chrome-stable -no-default-browser-check %U

You may need to logout and login for it to take effect. I also noticed I had a lot of google-*-Default.desktop in ~/.local/share/applications. I removed them and copied /usr/share/applications/google-chrome.desktop to ~/.local/share/applications/.

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0

The most voted answer this is not the case on my machine but definitely leads to the right solution..

I would suggest that you just run..

cd ~/.config/chromium/
grep -ri check_default_browser

Then edit the corresponding file(s) to false.

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  • 1
    How is this different from the accepted answer? Did you have to edit another file? Was it not the Preferences file that was in your default chrome profile? That should be ~/.config/chromium/SOMETHING/Preferences. Commented Nov 23, 2020 at 9:16
0

This worked for me in 2021

On your computer, open Chrome. At the top right, click More More and then Settings. Under “You and Google,” select Sync and Google services. Turn on or off Help improve Chrome's features and performance.

After I did that, It never prompts this popup

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