To install the browser even if your computer doesn't have internet connection

Feb 18, 2012 19:11 GMT  ·  By

One of the great things about Google Chrome is that, once you've installed it you can forget anything about maintenance and updating, the newest version will always be downloaded and installed, completely in the background, unless there are problems with the automated updater.

Since this is a browser after all, you're probably going to have an internet connection when downloading and installing it, so the default download option is an "installer" a small executable file that then pulls the rest of the needed files from the cloud.

Normally, this is not an issue, but there are some cases where you need to have Chrome packaged and ready to install on a device with no internet connection.

This is where the standalone installer comes in, the option is offered by Google, but it's not really advertised, you need to know where to look for it, or more specifically how to trigger it.

Fortunately, it's rather simple. The download URL is something like google.com/chrome?platform=win or google.com/chrome/eula.html?extra=devchannel&platform=win if you want the dev channel version.

All you have to do to get the standalone installer is add &standalone=1 to the URL, or ?standalone=1 if there are no other options, for example google.com/chrome?standalone=1 or google.com/chrome?platform=win&standalone=1.

Another useful option is system=true, which can be added in the same way as the standalone option, which provides a file that installs Chrome for all the users of a Windows computer, not just the current one.

It works for the dev channel and the beta channel alike. The option is not of much use for Mac OS X or Linux users, since they already get the full installer package.

Of course, there's an even easier way of grabbing the full installer for Chrome stable, beta or dev, without having to hack any URLs, just grab it straight from Softpedia.