How to Install Chrome on Manjaro or Arch-based Linux Distro

Google Chrome doesn’t have an official package for Manjaro or other arch-based Linux Distro.

So how can you install Google Chrome on your Arch-based system?

Chrome is not an open-source browser but a privately owned browser built on top of Chromium Project that’s why it doesn’t come pre-installed with any of the Linux Distros or any proprietary Operating System.

But the good thing is you can actually install Google Chrome on almost all of the major supported Operating systems and Major Linux Distros, including Arch and Manjaro.

In this article, I’ll show you how to install Chrome on Manjaro or any other Arch-based Linux Distro using AUR Repository and Terminal.

So, Let’s get started.

How to Install Chrome on Manjaro using AUR App Store

So, First We’re going to see how to download and install Google Chrome Stable from the AUR Store.

For doing so, follow the simple steps mentioned below.

Step 1 – Launch “Add or Remove Software”

The first step is to Hit the super key and search for “Add / Remove Software” and launch it.

It is the GUI version of the pacman package manager.

Step 2 – Open Preferences

Now click on the three-dot icon at the top right corner of the window and then click on the preferences option.

Step 3 – Go to Third Party Repo Option

After clicking the preferences option, a new window will pop in front of you, you need to navigate to the right top of the window and find a tab called, “Third Party” and click on it.

Step 4 – Enable AUR Support

After going to the Third Party repository tabs, you need to turn on the, “Enable AUR Support” option.

Step 5 – Search for Chrome

Now you can close the preference menu and search for chrome using the search icon on the left top of the software store window.

Step 6 – Open the AUR tab

Currently, you’re getting global search results for Chrome, now you need to go and select the AUR tab from the left panel of the Software Store Window.

It will narrow down the search criteria to the AUR packages only.

Step 7 – Look for the package “google-chrome”

Now you need to look for the package called “google-chrome” from the search results list. The description of the package would be – “The popular and trusted web browser by Google(Stable Channel)”

Remember to choose the stable channel only, not the beta or dev channel.

Step 8 – Install Google-Chrome

Now after finding the “google-chrome” package click on the green download button beside it and click on “Apply” on the bottom right of the window to apply the changes.

It will pop up the transaction summary window, click on apply and proceed with installing Chrome on your Manjaro Linux. It might also ask you for your administrative password, if so, put in your password to continue the installation process.

Now let’s see Google Chrome’s installation process using the terminal.

How to Install Chrome on Manjaro using Terminal

To install Chrome just by using the terminal, follow these steps:

Step 1 – Open Terminal

Firstly, launch your terminal, to do so you can hit the start button / the super key and search for “terminal“.

Alternatively, you can just use the keyboard shortcut “Ctrl + Alt + T” to directly launch the terminal window.

Step 2 – Install git

Now we need to install Yay, which is an AUR helper(package manager) through which we will be able to install Chrome.

So we need to clone Yay for installation from git, so for that, git must be installed on your Manjaro Linux.

To check if git is already installed or not you can, type the command –

git --version

If this command shows a valid git version that means git is already installed on your Manjaro and you can now proceed to install Yay.

If git version check returns an error, that means you need to install git first, to do so, use this command –

sudo pacman -S git

Step 3 – Install Yay

Now after git has been installed, it’s time to clone yay and install yay package manager, which helps get packages from AUR, that’s where we will be getting our Google Chrome package from.

Now fetch the Yay git package from arch Linux’s repository, using this command –

git clone https://aur.archlinux.org/yay-git.git

After yay cloning has been completed, now you need to navigate your terminal directory to yay. To navigate to the yay directory, use the command –

cd yay-git

Now we need to build the package of yay for installation, install yay using this command –

makepkg -si

After executing this command, it will ask for your administrative password. Type your admin password and hit enter.

After doing that it will ask you for the confirmation of installation, Type ‘Y‘ and hit enter again.

Now, give it some time. It will start retrieving the package, clone and build the packages and install yay on your Manjaro system. It may once again ask for your admin password while installing yay, so you might need to feed in your password again.

Step 4 – Install Chrome using Yay

Now after yay has been successfully installed, we can use yay to install Chrome on Manjaro Linux.

To fetch the Google Chrome package from AUR using yay, type the command –

yay -S google-chrome

After executing the command, yay will fetch and show you different chrome packages available to install. Now you need to choose “google-chrome” package for installation, generally, it’s number 1, but you have to type the number shown on “google-chrome” package and hit enter.

It will download and build the Chrome package and install it on your Arch system.

How to Update Google Chrome on Manjaro

According to Google, Chrome doesn’t get auto-updated on Linux but your package manager handles it.

And since the Chrome package is not even officially supported for Arch-based Linux Distributions, how can you actually stay updated on the latest Chrome Version?

Well, there are two prominent ways to update Chrome on Manjaro, just like 2 ways of installing it.

Method 1 – Using AUR Support in Software Store

When you actually went to the software store preferences to turn on the AUR support in your Manjaro software store to be able to install Google Chrome on Manjaro Linux of yours, you have also got an option to check for updates for packages that are downloaded and installed through AUR.

You can turn that option on to get updates on the packages and software that you have or you’ll be installing through AUR.

So, by this method, you’ll get the latest Chrome updates from AUR along with your system updates or when you’re doing software updates through the software store.

Method 2 – Updating Chrome using Terminal

Actually, things are very simple using the terminal, to be fair it’s almost the same as doing it manually from the software store but yeah! here in the terminal, you need to punch in just one command and everything gets done on its own.

Since we used yay, Aur helper to install Chrome through Terminal anyways, that means you’ll still be getting Chrome updates along with AUR package updates, so you just need to do an AUR package update and your Google Chrome will automatically be updated if there’s a new version out there.

To perform the AUR package update in Manjaro, use the following command –

yay -Syu

Conclusion

So, this was pretty much how you can easily install Chrome on Manjaro and update it using both AUR Store support and via using an AUR helper – yay, and updating Chrome using both methods as well.

If you face any difficulty while installing, or updating Google Chrome on your Manjaro Linux, feel free to comment down below, I’ll be happy to try to solve the issue you’re facing.

If you want to remove Firefox from your Arch system, after installing Chrome, you can follow this simple guide to be able to remove Firefox from any major Linux Distro.

• How to remove Firefox From Ubuntu / Mint / Debian / Manjaro / Fedora

FAQs Related to Google Chrome and Manjaro

Here are some of the commonly asked questions about installing Google Chrome on Manjaro.

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