One of the biggest advantages of having a browser based on Chromium is to offer your users access to the huge library of extensions available to the Google browser . This is how on the desktop, Vivaldi, Opera and now Microsoft Edge , give us that opportunity despite differing quite a bit from Google Chrome.
However, in the mobile the story is different, and at least for now, Chrome for Android does not support extensions. However, another browser much less known but also based on Chromium has just become one of the first to achieve such a feat and now it is possible to install Chrome extensions on Android .
Kiwi Browser
This small browser for Android based on the Chromium engine is a user-independent project arnaud42 from the XDA Developers forums. It is completely free and besides being quite fast, it integrates several interesting functions like blocker for the announcements , the tracking, popups, notifications and even cryptominers, and even has its own dark mode.
From today, its latest version offers support for Chrome extensions. All you need to do is go to the extension page to install it directly or download the .crx file.
You can download the latest version of Kiwi Browser from APK Mirror, or from the Play Store (the latter will take a little longer to update to the one that supports extensions).
How to install Chrome extensions in Kiwi Browser for Android
Once you have installed the browser you just have to run it for the first time and then go to the page of the extension you want to install. Going directly to the Chrome Web Store will leave you with an “unsupported” message, but going to the page of each extension individually works.
We have tested with two of our favorite extensions: Dark Reader and uBlock Origin .Just touch the “Add to Chrome” button as you do from the desktop and you will see the confirmation message appear.
Here they will tell you the permissions that the extension needs and you only have to touch “Accept” to install the extension. Once finished this can happen two things: everything is as it was and your extension is installed, or they send you directly to the configuration page of the extension.
Anyway, if you click on the menu button (three vertical lines in the upper right) and navigate to the end of the options, you will see the icon of your extension as confirmation that it has been installed. In addition, from there you can also access the configuration of this or activate / deactivate it.
Another important detail to know is that if you enter chrome: // extensions from the URL bar, you can go to the management page of your installed extensions.
And, in addition to this, if you click on the hamburger menu on the left you can directly access the Chrome extensions store without problems.
Now, as noted in XDA , Kiwi supports the import of any extension for Chrome that does not depend on x86 binary code, so not all extensions are going to work , but a big part yes, it’s a matter of testing.