How to get Google Chrome without installing it?

38,063

Solution 1

How about Chromium? It's "the open-source projects behind the Google Chrome browser".

Go to the build page, choose your platform, choose a build (larger number means newer), download the zip file, then extract and run! Perfect for me.

Solution 2

Portable apps is your best solution to this problem.

The portable apps .paf file is technically a .zip file with a different extension.

To clarify how a portable apps installation works:

When you install the app to a flash drive with portable apps on it, all entries that would normally go into the windows registry, are in fact written to files within the portable apps system. Additionally, any files that might have been installed on the C drive, despite you specifying a D drive installation path, are also installed to your portable apps flash drive.

What you are looking for: an exe file you can download and just run; is rarely done these days in the world of programming. Sorry, but that is just the way most programs are developed. It is the primary reason that environments such as portableApps were developed.

The primary reason for the current install and write to the registry environment was to prevent people from bootlegging programs by simply copying the program folder from one location to the other which was very common during the dos/windows 3.1/Win96 days.

By the way, portableApps.com is not the only flash drive environment that makes programs portable. But it is likely the one that's most popular.

To test the non install portability of GoogleChromePortable, I copied the GoogleChromePortable folder from my portableApps drive to my D double clicked GoogleChromePortable.exe file to run Chrome and the it started without any problems. I could also go to various websites with it. So all you really have to do is decompress the portableapps.paf file to a folder on your C or D drive and run the program.

Take care.

Solution 3

You might also consider some de-googled chrome derivatives which have portable versions:

Iridium Browser https://iridiumbrowser.de/downloads
Ungoogled Chromium https://ungoogled-software.github.io/ungoogled-chromium-binaries/

38,063

Murray Furtado

Hello, world! I enjoy using my experience to help others. That is why I am active at a number of other sites in the StackExchange network on topics that interest me. I'm something of a Swiss army knife both professionally and in private, able to juggle a wild variety of things at once. I've worked in every kind of business that uses software. I'm also very good with tools, both IT and mechanic. Whether you need software design or assembling some IKEA furniture, I'm your man for the job. I'm generally soft-spoken but driven by clear principles. I'm a twin, I've lived in five countries, I speak four languages fluently and two more embarrassingly. Also, being a father routinely develops my patience which is useful for moderating on StackExchange too. To learn more about me, see my Google+ profile.

Updated on September 17, 2022

Comments

Murray Furtado almost 2 years

I know that some Windows applications are stand-alone in the sense that you can just start the EXE directly and it works - no installation required. Can Google Chrome do this?

I'd like to run Google Chrome, but I am looking for a way to run it on a Windows XP system without having to install it first. I thought I was looking for a portable version but that still needs to be installed. So "portable" is not the keyword I'm looking for, while "stand-alone" doesn't yield any results.
- wliao over 13 years
  
  I used Chrome Plus before, it's portable. You can download the portable version, just unzip and use.
Murray Furtado over 13 years

I was clearly asking for no installation required.
BZink about 11 years

Link is dead...
iamcrypticcoder about 11 years

Right, seems like they don't provide that anymore :(
BZink about 11 years

I don't have enough rep on SU to edit, but here's a link to all the continuous releases. Higher number = more current releases. commondatastorage.googleapis.com/chromium-browser-continuous‌/…
Pacerier over 9 years

@BZink, How do we know which are the stable releases? Also, do we have to manually update everytime or is it automatically update just like normal Chrome?
Pacerier over 9 years

So isn't PortableApps itself an installation? Or does it reside only in a folder?
user5249203 over 9 years

@Pacerier: PortableApps(.com) != "portable apps"
Pacerier over 9 years

@BZink, Hmm, then wouldn't the chromium zip we download have an extremely high chance of being a mere "development" package instead of a "stable" release package?
Pacerier over 9 years

Isn't that self-defeating? Catch-22. We need a portable Chrome and they go "OK, but first install a non-portable exe".