How to Force Internet Explorer to Always Use Google Chrome

This article describes how you can force Internet Explorer browser to always render all web pages in Google Chrome even if the site doesn’t carry the Chrome meta tag.

You love Google Chrome more than Internet Explorer but since you work in a corporate environment, you aren’t allowed to install Google’s browser on your office computer.

How do you use Chrome then?

Well, you have two options. You can either use the portable version of Chrome (it doesn’t require installation) or you may download the Chrome Frame plugin that, in simple English, will let you run Google Chrome inside Internet Explorer itself.

The Google Chrome Frame plugin is available for all versions of Windows Internet Explorer (including IE 6).

Always Open Sites in Google Chrome

There is a minor problem. If are want to open a website inside Internet Explorer using Google Chrome Frame, you need to manually prefix the URL with “cf:” (without quotes) to activate the Chrome engine. For example, you’ll have to type cf:http://labnol.org in the IE address bar to render this site using Chrome.

Since this involves some effort, here’s a simple workaround that will automatically open all websites inside the Google Chrome Frame without you having to type the “cf” prefix with every URL.

Download the chrome-frame.reg file and double click it. This will add a new entry in your Windows registry forcing IE to render all web pages with Chrome.

chrome registry hack

If you like to change that behavior to the default settings,   just open your Windows Registry (start -> run -> regedit) and navigate to the following key.

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Google\ChromeFrame\OptInUrls

Now delete the registry value that says * and Chrome Frame will become invisible again unless you manually invoke it with cf command.

Amit Agarwal

Amit Agarwal

Google Developer Expert, Google Cloud Champion

Amit Agarwal is a Google Developer Expert in Google Workspace and Google Apps Script. He holds an engineering degree in Computer Science (I.I.T.) and is the first professional blogger in India.

Amit has developed several popular Google add-ons including Mail Merge for Gmail and Document Studio. Read more on Lifehacker and YourStory

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