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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.

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  • Did you ever find out a nice way to install and update stable builds? The current answers still only install the latest dev builds...
    – Aᴄʜᴇʀᴏɴғᴀɪʟ
    Jul 23, 2017 at 22:38

7 Answers 7

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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...

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).

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  • 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, 2013 at 15:13
  • The FreeSMUG builds show as unsigned on my computer, does anybody else see this?
    – lupincho
    Jan 27, 2013 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, 2013 at 7:26
  • What's with the links formatted like footnotes? Why not just make the relevant word or phrase a link?
    – Kenny Evitt
    Nov 7, 2015 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, 2017 at 0:01
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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
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  • 1
    Thanks. Small update: brew install caskroom/cask/brew-cask is no longer valid. But other than that, this totally works.
    – Neel
    Apr 15, 2016 at 6:52
  • Much simpler than the accepted answer, thanks! Nice to know about autoupdate too.
    – mVChr
    Apr 12, 2017 at 15:52
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    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, 2017 at 0:04
  • You have to trust the source “Chromium can’t be opened because it is from an unidentified developer."
    – alexandre-rousseau
    Aug 19, 2019 at 9:17
  • Just as @wisbucky said, my HomeBrew build matches the latest dev version at chromiumdash.appspot.com/releases?platform=Mac. Got to make the latest stable version also available in HomeBrew.
    – trss
    Jan 19, 2021 at 10:43
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Stable build from FreeSMUG (Free Software Mac User Group are here: http://www.freesmug.org/chromium

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1
  • 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, 2017 at 0:00
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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)"
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2

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://omahaproxy.appspot.com/ 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.

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1

Try

http://download-chromium.appspot.com

Nice and easy, just download.

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    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 5, 2013 at 0:49
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Get on the bleeding edge of the web with Google Chrome's nightly builds called Chrome Canary. This should work for you. Good luck!

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    Canary is not chromium, but the second link seems legit, thx.
    – Yuval Adam
    Jan 14, 2013 at 15:11

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