If you have come this far it is because you like Google Chrome but above all because you are wondering how to install chrome extensions on Android. Well, in the following article we are going to learn that our Android mobile phone can have extensions installed that make our navigation easier.
One of the characteristics of desktop or pc browsers such as Google Chrome are its famous extensions, which in this case also stand out for the better. Through the extensions, you as a user you can add extra functions such as a password manager or a system to manage windows or tabs. Firefox, Edge and Chrome (as well as Chromium-based browsers) have their own extensions with their corresponding stores, but despite being so good, they are not usually available for Android versions.
However, although we have said that Chrome extensions for Android cannot be added, they can be installed in a third-party browser which is quite popular and it may sound like something to you. It's called Kiwi and it's developed by arnaud42 (XDA user). The Kiwi browser allows you Installing extensions quickly and easily is therefore our solution to extension problems. Let's see how we can install all this.
Install an extension with Kiwi
First of all we have to tell you or clarify one thing, there is a downside, unfortunately not all extensions are compatible with the Kiwi browser. Kiwi support is limited to extensions that don't use x86 binary codeTherefore, we regret to tell you that the most complex extensions to program may not be able to be installed in the browser. That said, many of the best known and downloaded such as uBlock Origin or TamperMonkey work without any problems that we know of.
Once we have made this clarification, so that you do not get any scares, we can start to explain step by step how to install Chrome extensions on Android.
As it is obvious and you were already wondering, the first thing is install Kiwi browser from Google Play Store. Once you have it installed, you can open any window you have on hand and you will only have to follow these steps:
- Press the three points that you will find in the upper right area to open the Kiwi browser settings
- Once you have them open, select "Extensions".
- Now click on the text that says "Google" or click on the three lines located in the upper left area and after that, select "Open Kiwi Web Store". These two accesses lead to the same place: the Google Chrome extension store.
- Select one of those that appear or search for the one you want to use.
- Click on it and then select the option that says "Add to Chrome." The download will start and take place automatically like any other.
- When it is fully downloaded, Kiwi will show you the information that the extension must access.
- Finally, you must select "OK" and wait a couple of seconds for the installation to complete.
Once you make sure that the installation has finished, you will only have to press again on the typical three points that are located in the upper right area and after that scroll all the way to the bottom to check that, indeed, the extension is successfully installed on your mobile phone. If after all this, you click on it, you can activate it, manage it or configure it as you want.
Arrived here you can also ask yourself how to uninstall an extension. Well, it is done in a very simple way. You will only have to type in the search bar "chrome: // extensions" but without the quotation marks, and thus you will be able to access the list of all the extensions that you have installed in Kiwi and on your smartphone. After this, you will see that under each one of them appears the "delete" button. Click on that button, accept what they ask you and voila, you will have the extension uninstalled.
To give you some more tip and make it very easy for you to find everything, you have to know that the official Chrome extensions store, has a web, which is chrome.google.com/webstore. From there you can click on each of them and download the ones you like the most.
When you enter the Chrome store, the Chrome Web Store, the Kiwi Browser will show you the page, almost always, in its desktop version automatically. Here, all you have to do is find and enter the profile of the extension that you would like to install in your browser to be able to use it on Android.
Finally I just remind you again that Many of the extensions are not adapted to the mobile, many may not work, and that the Kiwi browser only supports the import of extensions for Chrome that do not directly depend on programming in binary x86 code.
Download Kiwi
Kiwi Browser is a browser that has been developed by Geometry OU, a developer who is a member of XDA who between 2007 and 2008 was working for Google on the development of Chromium, the basis on which the development of Google Chrome is based. This developer has been working on this alternative for a few months and it is already available on Google Play to be downloaded by the general public, therefore, we can already enjoy this browser.
The browser, obviously, bears a great resemblance to Google Chrome, since it is based on Chromium 69 and it can be said that they are first cousins, they even share a developer as we have commented. Kiwi Browser works very well and does not have any add-ons that spoil the user experience. Also and as expected, if you launch an alternative browser to Google Chrome, you launch it with improvements, so we guarantee that Kiwi comes with several implementations that improve performance and an ad blocker has been added natively, without having to add it via extension, so that first download that we all do already comes standard.
Among all the available improvements we can find the possibility of changing the position of the search bar and place it at the bottom, much more accessible on large mobile phones and a change that no other mobile browser has, at least the ones we have tested.
With regard to search engines, we have to say that the basic option has been to keep only Google, although nothing happens if we want to add someone else, you will only have to search from it and it will be integrated into the browser.
Other functionalities of the Kiwi Browser browser can be the possibility of playing YouTube videos in the background without adding anything from third parties, a cryptocurrency blocker and it offers you the possibility of being able to enter the chat of the social network Facebook, without the need to install Facebook Messenger, therefore, you save on space. If we are going to comment on how the downloads work, we can choose in which folders we want the files to be saved, something that we have not seen in other browsers either.
But without a doubt, one of the great additions to the Kiwi Browser is the dark mode that it incorporates as standard, just installed. It is simply excellent, especially if our mobile phone has an AMOLED screen, since in them, the blacks are more intense. In addition to this, the mode is customizable, being able to choose that the black is with a 100% contrast so that the pixel is duller or if you prefer, on the contrary, you can have a gray scale.
Android also has a dark mode but the truth is that it is a function that we would have liked to find in the settings that are within Google Chrome. For all of you who, like us, miss this, in Kiwi Browser you have it available in a very simple wayIn fact, it is so simple that it seems illogical that it is not found in this way in other browsers with which it competes.
At this point we hope to have resolved the question about how to install Chrome extensions on Android and that from now on, you know that there is a much better browser, developed by one of the parents of Google Chrome. Leave us in the comments box if you knew him or how the experience of downloading extensions for Android with Kiwi Browser has gone.