38

What is the proper way to install Chromium (not chrome!) on Mac OS X?

Stable builds are a must, beta builds or nightlies are nice to have.

Yuval Adam
  • 483

7 Answers7

35

Currently recommended method (05-2017):

  • Install HomeBrew
  • brew tap domt4/chromium
  • brew cask install mac-chromium
  • brew tap buo/cask-upgrade (click here for cask-upgrade info/source)

To upgrade Chromium, run:

  • brew cu

or

  • brew cu -y -a

This was the original posted answer:

  • Install HomeBrew
  • Install HomeBrew Casks: brew install caskroom/cask/brew-cask <- this is now obsolete
  • Install Chromium: brew cask install chromium

Or, an alternative

is this method which uses this script, and has a more up to date version as the one above (and also verifies the Chromium checksum), and provides updates:

  • Install HomeBrew
  • brew tap domt4/chromium
  • brew install domt4/chromium/chromium
  • brew linkapps chromium

updating is as simple as:

  • brew update; brew upgrade

If you want to automatically upgrade daily in the background you can use this (note that this also upgrades your other HomeBrew packages if you have any):

  • brew tap domt4/autoupdate
  • brew autoupdate --start --upgrade
Motsel
  • 959
  • 1
    Thanks. Small update: brew install caskroom/cask/brew-cask is no longer valid. But other than that, this totally works. – Neel Apr 15 '16 at 06:52
  • Much simpler than the accepted answer, thanks! Nice to know about autoupdate too. – mVChr Apr 12 '17 at 15:52
  • 1
    FYI, both the canonical homebrew chromium as well as domt4's chromium are canary/latest versions (currently v60). I could not find a working stable chromium installer (currently v58). The FreeSMUG one did not work for me on Yosemite. – wisbucky May 10 '17 at 00:04
  • You have to trust the source “Chromium can’t be opened because it is from an unidentified developer." – alexandre-rousseau Aug 19 '19 at 09:17
  • Just as @wisbucky said, my HomeBrew build matches the latest dev version at https://chromiumdash.appspot.com/releases?platform=Mac. Got to make the latest stable version also available in HomeBrew. – trss Jan 19 '21 at 10:43
25

The Chromium Project1 does not seem to provide compiled builds for the OS X or Windows platform. If you run Ubuntu, you can use the Software Center to install Chromium just like you would with the Mac App Store.

Therefore, under OS X you would have to download the source code and build the application yourself which requires the use of the free Development Software Xcode2.

You can follow the official Mac build instructions to help you get started:

https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/+/master/docs/mac_build_instructions.md


Ewh! I don't want to go through all this trouble, follow the advice below. BUT, Before proceeding with these instructions, please note the the freesmug.org website has discontinued its builds for Chromium on MacOS and it recommends just using firefox or safari (both for privacy), instead. Freesmug.org builds of chromium are no longer under active development and you will not be able to get the latest versions. Proceed cautiously.

The Free OpenSource Mac User Group hosts a site that has the latest3 compiled build. According to their website:

  1. ...the download is compiled following the official Mac Build Instructions (link above).
  2. ...they integrated the Sparkle4 update framework to offer a simple update procedure since Chromium does not have the auto-update feature of Google Chrome.

Their download is a simple .dmg which you install via drag-and-drop, just like Chrome.

While they do provide a MD5 hash, the Chromium Project does not provide MD5 hashes of the compiled builds. So you have to trust this website's integrity when using their downloads.

Other than no auto-update integration, Chromium has some more differences from Google Chrome which you can read in the following Wikipedia article on Chromium (web browser).

bmike
  • 235,889
gentmatt
  • 49,722
  • I can build Chromium (thx for the thorough steps, I already have an environment :)), but I'm looking for precompiled builds that are easy to distribute. – Yuval Adam Jan 14 '13 at 15:13
  • The FreeSMUG builds show as unsigned on my computer, does anybody else see this? – lupincho Jan 27 '13 at 18:47
  • @lupincho No, I had no problem executing the current download in 10.8.2. No warning or anything like that. – gentmatt Jan 28 '13 at 07:26
  • What's with the links formatted like footnotes? Why not just make the relevant word or phrase a link? – Kenny Evitt Nov 07 '15 at 16:29
  • The FreeSMUG dmg as well as brew cask install freesmug-chromium did not work for me. It installed fine, but when I ran it, it gave error "Chromium quit unexpectedly." – wisbucky May 10 '17 at 00:01
  • "the Chromium Project does not provide MD5 hashes of the compiled builds" Such a thing would have no meaning anyway. There is no one hash for a build. The hash can easily vary from compiler-to-compiler, day-to-day etc. Only a hash from the person who compiled the software is meaningful - the hash only protects you from middlemen during transfer from that person – Lightness Races in Orbit Jun 11 '19 at 15:42
3

The proper way is kind of convoluted and unnecessarily difficult. However, in my recent struggles to find the answer myself, I want to let everyone here know what I did to arrive where I am at now.

  1. Go to https://chromiumdash.appspot.com/releases to find what "branch_base_position" number you will need to find for retrieving the Chromium.application zip file.
  2. Find you "os" (mac) and "channel": stable, beta, dev, or canary.
  3. Once you have identified which oc and channel that you want to use/download, copy the "branch_base_position" number and head here: https://commondatastorage.googleapis.com/chromium-browser-snapshots/index.html?prefix=Mac/
  4. At the time of this post: May 17, 2019 and 2:05pm EST, the latest stable version for mac was 74.0.3729.157 with a "branch_base_position" number of 638880, so the link to the latest stable built mac application is: https://commondatastorage.googleapis.com/chromium-browser-snapshots/index.html?prefix=Mac/638880/
  5. Additionally, the latest dev build was 76.0.3788.1 with a "branch_base_position" number of 657589, so the link to the latest dev built mac application is: https://commondatastorage.googleapis.com/chromium-browser-snapshots/index.html?prefix=Mac/657589/
  6. The latest revision of beta was 75.0.3770.38, but I could not find a built package for it so I will not provide it here.
  7. Once you have downloaded and unzipped the version you have chosen, simply drag the Chromium.app from wherever you unpacked it to, into the Applications folder.

Note

In steps 4 and 5, the file that you will need to download is chrome-mac.zip

Note 2

From what I can tell, the install requirements for mac are OS X Yosemite 10.10 or later taken from https://support.google.com/chrome/a/answer/7100626?hl=en

Note 3

All this information was found from going to https://www.chromium.org/getting-involved/download-chromium in the section titled "Downloading old builds of Chrome / Chromium"

Edit 12/14/2021

This method is still valid, but I personally use the Woolyss builds.

Edit 3/19/2024

Chrome/Chromium no longer supports Max OS X <10.15. If you still would like to use Chromium on older build, check out this repository here.

juliangonzalez
  • 103
  • 2
iamdoubz
  • 31
  • 1
    For step 3, there's a LAST_CHANGE file you can filter by that shows the latest build number (in this case, https://www.googleapis.com/download/storage/v1/b/chromium-browser-snapshots/o/Mac%2FLAST_CHANGE?generation=1656170689042370&alt=media => https://commondatastorage.googleapis.com/chromium-browser-snapshots/index.html?prefix=Mac/1017963/) – chronospoon Jun 25 '22 at 15:32
3

You can install it with Homebrew. The cask is included by default.

brew install --cask chromium

In case you don't have Homebrew installed already, you can install it with this command.

/bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/HEAD/install.sh)"
Aamnah
  • 131
2

Stable build from FreeSMUG (Free Software Mac User Group are here: http://www.freesmug.org/chromium

CGand
  • 21
  • The FreeSMUG dmg as well as brew cask install freesmug-chromium did not work for me. It installed fine, but when I ran it, it gave error "Chromium quit unexpectedly." – wisbucky May 10 '17 at 00:00
1

Try

http://download-chromium.appspot.com

Nice and easy, just download.

chiggsy
  • 3,049
  • 1
    Be aware that the download on this page is not ideal for most users. It grabs the Chromium build directly from the Chromium SVN build server which is not always stable. It's roughly equivalent to Chrome Canary, which Google says is "designed for developers and early adopters, and can sometimes break down completely." so be aware of this before downloading. – Dan Herbert Mar 05 '13 at 00:49
-1

Get on the bleeding edge of the web with Google Chrome's nightly builds called Chrome Canary. This should work for you. Good luck!

Graham Miln
  • 43,776
nick
  • 117