Can I run multiple versions of Google Chrome on the same machine? (Mac or Windows)

Question

This fabulous answer suggests there’s no way to run multiple versions of Google Chrome on one machine.

Every now and then you’ll get a website user stuck on an old version of Chrome (no idea how, but it happens — maybe they installed the standalone version?) with an issue, and you need to be able to verify it. Bit difficult to do that without their browser version around.

Does anyone know if there’s actually a way to do this? I.e.

1. Obtain an installer for an older version of Google Chrome (Google seems to keep very quiet about versions, which is great for users, less great for developers trying to support old versions)
2. Run two versions of Google Chrome on one machine

Solution 1

In the comments, I mentioned a step-by-step method to easily install multiple Chrome versions, side-by-side. This answer quotes my original answer, and includes a script which does the job for you.

Quoted from: section 7 of Cross-browser testing: All major browsers on ONE machine:

Chrome: Stand-alone installers can be downloaded from File Hippo. It is also possible to run multiple Chrome versions side-by-side.

Although Sandboxie can be used, it's recommended to use the next native method in order to run multiple versions side-by-side.

1. Download the desired version(s) from File Hippo.
2. Create a main directory, e.g. C:\Chrome\.
3. Extract the installer (=without installing), using 7-Zip for example. After extracting, a chrome.7z archive is created. Also extract this file, and descend the created Chrome-bin directory. Now, you see chrome.exe and a dir like 18.0.1025.45. Move chrome.exe to 18.0.1025.45, then move this directory to C:\Chrome. The remaining files in Chrome-bin can safely be deleted.

4. Create a shortcut for each version:

   "C:\Chrome\18.0.1024.45\chrome.exe" --user-data-dir="..\User Data\18" --chrome-version=18.0.1025.45
   

   Explanation of this shortcut:

   • "C:\Chrome\18.0.1024.45\chrome.exe" • This is the launcher
   • --user-data-dir="..\User Data\18" • User profile, relative to the location of chrome.exe. You could also have used --user-data-dir="C:\Chrome\User Data\18" for the same effect. Set your preferences for the lowest Chrome version, and duplicate the User profile for each Chrome version. Older Chrome versions refuse to use User profiles from new versions.
   • --chrome-version=18.0.1025.45 • Location of binaries:
     • The location (eg 18.0.1025.45) must be the name of the directory:
     • Must start and end with a number. A dot may appear in between.
     • The numbers do not necessarily have to match the real version number (though it's convenient to use real version numbers...).

Regarding configuration: All preferences can be set at chrome://settings/. I usually change the home page and "Under the hood" settings.

• Disable auto-updates: http://dev.chromium.org/administrators/turning-off-auto-updates

(the old version of this answer referred to Old Apps for old Chrome versions, but they do not offer direct download links any more through the UI. The files do still exist, I've created a shell script (bash) to ease the creation of a local repository of Chrome versions - see https://gist.github.com/Rob--W/8577499)

VB Script which automates install, config & launch

I've created a VB script which installs and configures Chrome (tested in XP and Win 7). Launch the script, and a file dialog appears (or: Drag & drop the chrome installer on the VBS). Select the destination of the Chrome installer, and the script automatically unpacks the files and duplicates the profile from a pre-configured base directory.

By default:

1. The Chrome binaries are placed in subfolders of C:\Chrome\.
2. The User profiles are created in C:\Chrome\User Data\.
3. The user profiles will be duplicated from the directory as specified in the sFolderChromeUserDataDefault variable, which is C:\Chrome\User Data\2\ by default.
   After the first Chrome installation, set your preferences (Home page, bookmarks, ..). Then modify the variable (see 3.) in the source code. After that, installing and configuring Chrome is as easy as pie.

The only dependency is 7-zip, expected to be located at C:\Program Files\7-zip\7z.exe.

Solution 2

I adopted @RobW's nice answer to get it working on Mac OS X 10.8. Other versions of Mac OS X may probably work too.

The little extra work is actually only needed to keep your original Google Chrome user settings and the old version separated.

1. Download another version of Google Chrome, like the Dev channel and extract the .app file

2. (optional) Rename it to Google Chrome X.app – if not already different from Google Chrome.app

(Be sure to replace X for all following steps with the actual version of Chrome you just downloaded)

3. Move Google Chrome X.app to /Applications without overwritting your current Chrome

4. Open the Terminal, create a shell script and make your script executable:

   cd /Applications
   touch google-chrome-version-start.sh
   chmod +x google-chrome-version-start.sh
   nano google-chrome-version-start.sh
   

5. Modify the following code according to the version you downloaded and paste it into the script

   #!/usr/bin/env bash
   /Applications/Google\ Chrome\ X.app/Contents/MacOS/Google\ Chrome\ X --user-data-dir="tmp/Google Chrome/X/" & disown
   

   For example for Dev Channel:

   #!/usr/bin/env bash
   /Applications/Google\ Chrome\ Dev.app/Contents/MacOS/Google\ Chrome\ Dev --user-data-dir="tmp/Google Chrome Dev/" & disown
   

   (This will store Chrome's data at ~/tmp/Google Chrome/VERSION/. For more explanations see the original answer.)

6. Now execute the script and be happy!

   /Application/google-chrome-version-start.sh
   

Tested it with Google Chrome 88 on a Mac running OS X 10.15 Catalina

Solution 3

Your mileage may vary (mine sure did), but here's what worked for me (current version of Chrome as of this post is 33.x, and I was interested in 24.x)

• Visit the Chromium repo proxy lookup site: http://omahaproxy.appspot.com/

• In the little box called "Revision Lookup" type in the version number. This will translate it to a Subversion revision number. Keep that number in mind.

• Visit the build repository: http://commondatastorage.googleapis.com/chromium-browser-snapshots/index.html

• Select the folder corresponding to the OS you're interested in (I have Win x64, but had to use Win,because there was no x64 build corresponding to the version I was looking for).

• If you select Win, you could be in for a wait - as some of the pages have a lot of entries. Once the page loads, scroll to the folder containing the revision number you identified in an earlier step. If you don't find one, choose the next one up. This is a bit of trial and error to be honest - I had to back up about 50 revisions until I found a version close to the one I was looking for

• Drill into that folder and download (on the Win version) chrome-win32.zip. That's all you need.

• Unzip that file and then run chrome.exe

This worked for me and I'm running the latest Chrome alongside version 25, without problems (some profile issues on the older version, but that's neither here nor there). Didn't need to do anything else.

Again, YMMV, but try this solution first since it requires the least amount of tomfoolery.

Solution 4

For those who don't care if it's "Google Chrome", I suggest using "Chromium" instead.

See: Download Chromium

1. Look in http://googlechromereleases.blogspot.com/search/label/Stable%20updates for the last time "44." was mentioned.
2. Loop up that version history ("44.0.2403.157") in the Position Lookup
3. In this case it returns a base position of "330231". This is the commit of where the 44 release was branched, back in May 2015.*
4. Open the continuous builds archive
5. Click through on your platform (Linux/Mac/Win)
6. Paste "330231" into the filter field at the top and wait for all the results to XHR in.
7. Eventually I get a perfect hit: https://commondatastorage.googleapis.com/chromium-browser-snapshots/index.html?prefix=Mac/330231/
   1. Sometimes you may have to decrement the commit number until you find one.
8. Download and run!

Solution 5

Though this seems to be an old question with many answers I'm posting another one, because it provides information about another approaches (looking more convenient than already mentioned), and the question itself remains actual.

First, there is a blogpost Running multiple versions of Google Chrome on Windows. It describes a method which works, but has 2 drawbacks:

• you can't run Chrome instances of different versions simultaneously;
• from time to time, Chrome changes format of its profile, and as long as 2 versions installed by this method share the same directory with profiles, this may produce a problem if it's happened to test 2 versions with incompatible profile formats;

Second method is a preferred one, which I'm currently using. It relies on portable versions of Chrome, which become available for every stable release at the portableapps.com.

The only requirement of this method is that existing Chrome version should not run during installation of a next version. Of course, each version must be installed in a separate directory. This way, after installation, you can run Chromes of different versions in parallel. Of course, there is a drawback in this method as well:

• profiles in all versions live separately, so if you need to setup a profile in a specific way, you should do it twice or more times, according to the number of different Chrome versions you have installed.

View more solutions

Comments

[Joe Dargie]

Yeah, I’ve seen that site, looks good. Their “your browser is not supported” error page isn’t very helpful though, it just says “try another browser”. It doesn’t tell you which browsers they actually support.

[Joe Dargie]

I think Stack Overflow limits newer uses from posting links, to help avoid spam. Once you get some reputation points you’ll be able to post links freely; I’ve edited your answer to include the links in the meantime. Great answer!

[Joe Dargie]

Sounds interesting, and more convenient than one user account for each version of Chrome. I’ll give it a try.

[Axel M. Garcia]

This service is great on Windows, useless on other OSes. And they let you set up and account and download the whole VM before telling you this.

[Edyn]

I've used the second method (portableapps.com) and find it works well.

[Anmol Saraf]

This doesn't work anymore. Old Apps link says - "Google Chrome is no longer available to download on OldApps"

[Anmol Saraf]

The same can now be downloaded from filehippo.com/download_google_chrome

[Rob W]

@AnmolSaraf See updated answer. My original answer was updated to use File Hippo, but Old Apps does still host old versions (take a look at the new paragraph in my answer).

[Anmol Saraf]

@RobW Thanks, this will be helpful for new users now. You were also very quick to update the answer, quick work :)

[Tom Auger]

Sadly, attempting to extract Chrome 24 using 7Zip does NOT result in a chrome.7z archive but rather a binary file 102~ with which nothing can be done. I wonder whether you method only worked for older versions? - looks like Google changed the way their installer/downloader works.

[Rob W]

@Tom Look in the linked Github gist for known-good paths to offline installers. Most recently used to get Chrome 33.

[Jay Blanchard]

Each and every time that I try to download from File Hippo I get redirected and the current version of Chrome gets installed. Frustrating.

[Rob W]

@JayBlanchard Use the Github gist at gist.github.com/Rob--W/8577499 to get old versions from Old Apps. If you need a version not listed at Old Apps, just request a specific version via mail. I've got direct download URLs for almost every Chrome release since v23 (up to the latest beta, v36 at the moment).

[mhichwa]

Thanks! Apparently disabling auto-updates isn't required on Mac OS X - I was wondering why it wasn't in your answer :)

[HipsterZipster]

UPDATE: Just tried running the dl-chrome.sh script (10/21/2014) on previous version numbers that I pulled from the Wikipedia article on release history and all return 404. I've tried versions as old as 18.0.1025.45 to recent versions like 35.0.1916 and 36.0.1985. All are returning 404. @RobW Do you (or anyone else) know of any other location to get the older Chrome binaries?

[Rob W]

@HipsterZipster It seems that they're taken down, unfortunately. Which version do you want to have? From every major release, I have a copy of the official Windows release. From every release since v35, I've also got the file hash and the original download URL (but these URLs are no longer working, Google seems to disable previous URLs after releasing a new version).

[Max Ch]

omahaproxy.appspot.com is not helpful in identifying old revision numbers, but with some trial and error it worked like charm! Thanks!

[Saxon Druce]

The FileHippo links didn't work for me either, but I was able to get a similarly-aged version of Chromium by following the steps at superuser.com/questions/678008/…, and then setting up a shortcut as described in step #4 here.

[Stepan Yakovenko]

Note, it wouldn't help you if you want to run say 20 http-poll websocket emulation connections, processing are running togather, max 6 browsers togather.

[john poal]

this worked for me with the installers available at download.oldapps.com/Chrome as given in the github gist

[IvanRF]

Excellent! filehippo redirects to google now, so didn't work. I found the old chrome version installer at filepuma.com

[Abhishek Divekar]

To disable auto-updates on Mac, go to the file /Applications/Google\ Chrome\ VERSION.app/Contents/Info.plist and change the value of <key>KSUpdateURL</key> to <string>https://tools.google.com/abcdefg</string>. No other method worked for me (including setting defaults write com.google.Keystone.Agent checkInterval 0).

[Berkyjay]

As of Chrome 63, 7-zip can no longer extract the content of the stand-alone installer.

[Kevin Chandra]

work for me in 2022. I used omahaproxy.appspot.com to find related info about the version; 'Branch Base Position'. Then use it to filter in commondatastorage.googleapis.com/chromium-browser-snapshots/‌​…