How to Install Google Chrome Web Browser on Debian

Introduction

Google Chrome is the most widely used web browser all over the world. It is a quick, user-friendly, and secure browser designed for the modern web.

Chrome is not an open-source browser and is not available in the CentOS repositories. It is based on Chromium, an open-source browser that can be found in the Debian repositories.

This tutorial will demonstrate how to install the Google Chrome web browser on Debian.

Prerequisites

To install packages on your Debian system, you must be logged in as a user with sudo access.

Installing Google Chrome on Debian

To install Google Chrome on your Debian system, follow these steps.

1. Download Google Chrome

Either click the terminal icon or press the Ctrl+Alt+T keyboard shortcut to open your terminal.

To download the most recent Google Chrome .deb package, use the following wget command:

wget https://dl.google.com/linux/direct/google-chrome-stable_current_amd64.deb

2. Install Google Chrome

After the download is finished, install Google Chrome by typing the following command:

sudo apt install ./google-chrome-stable_current_amd64.deb

You will be prompted to type your user password. The above command will install Chrome and all of its dependencies.

Start Google Chrome

Once Google Chrome has been installed on your Debian system, you can start it by typing google-chrome in the command line or by clicking the Google Chrome icon (Activities -> Google Chrome).

The following window will appear when you start Google Chrome for the first time and will ask if you want to make it your default browser and to transmit usage statistics and crash reports to Google:

Choose according to your preference, and click OK to continue.

As soon as Google Chrome opens, the default Chrome welcome page will appear.

From this point, you can log into Chrome and sync your bookmarks, history, passwords, and other settings across all of your devices by using your Google Account to sign in.

Updating Google Chrome

The official Google repository will be added to your machine during the installation. The cat command can be used to verify the contents of the file:

cat /etc/apt/sources.list.d/google-chrome.list

Output

### THIS FILE IS AUTOMATICALLY CONFIGURED ###
# You may comment out this entry, but any other modifications may be lost.
deb [arch=amd64] http://dl.google.com/linux/chrome/deb/ stable main

You can update the Google Chrome package whenever a new version is available using either your desktop's default Software Update tool or by running the commands below into your terminal:

sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade

Conclusion

We have demonstrated how to install Google Chrome on your Debian desktop machine in this tutorial. You may import your bookmarks and settings from other browsers like Firefox or Opera into Chrome if you have previously used one of those browsers.

If you have any queries, feel free to leave a comment below, and we'll be happy to help.