How to Preserve Your Privacy and Install Chrome Extensions with Ungoogled Chromium

4 min readSep 22, 2022

Here I am, trying to use Airtable’s Web Clipper extension to make adding records to my table easier. But there is one problem. The extension only works on Google Chrome!

For those of you who don’t know me, I’ve been down the digital privacy rabbit hole for about a year and a half now. I’m no expert, but I incrementally improve my digital privacy when I find the time. Migrating away from Google completely is one of my top privacy goals.

I’ve done it for the most part with a degoogled Pixel 5a (calyxOS), migrating mostly to protonmail, using hardened firefox, and much more, but there’s a tradeoff. I don’t get access to some of Google’s stellar services. Or so I thought…

After five minutes of surfing the web, I remember Ungoogled Chromium is a thing. What is that you ask?

A lightweight approach to removing Google web service dependency

It’s objectives are simple

“In descending order of significance (i.e. most important objective first):
ungoogled-chromium is Google Chromium, sans dependency on Google web services.
ungoogled-chromium retains the default Chromium experience as closely as possible. Unlike other Chromium forks that have their own visions of a web browser, ungoogled-chromium is essentially a drop-in replacement for Chromium.
ungoogled-chromium features tweaks to enhance privacy, control, and transparency. However, almost all of these features must be manually activated or enabled. For more details, see Feature Overview.
In scenarios where the objectives conflict, the objective of higher significance should take precedence.”

All I can think after reading that is “so you’re telling me there’s hope?!” Indeed there is.

Downloading Ungoogled Chromium

Reading through Ungoogled Chromium’s github repo is highly informative. I quickly realize that I can install the Airtable Web Clipper (and other extensions) via Ungoogled Chromium without signing into a Google account. Neat! But how do I do it?

Since I have a macOS, I’m running

brew install — cask eloston-chromium

Note: Take the time to verify that you’re not installing malware

Ungoogled Chromium is now in my applications folder.

Installing Extensions

After it finishes downloading, I open the app. I navigate to the chrome web store, but I can’t seem to figure out how to install extensions. Thank you devs for creating an FAQ section in your github repo! There is an entire section dedicated to installing extensions or themes from the Chrome Webstore.

There are two methods of installing extensions

The former

Allows installing extensions directly from chrome web store.
Automatically checks for updates to your installed extensions and displays them on the badge.

The latter

Allows you to download CRX files using this template CRX URL: https://clients2.google.com/service/update2/crx?response=redirect&acceptformat=crx2,crx3&prodversion=[VERSION]&x=id%3D[EXTENSION_ID]%26installsource%3Dondemand%26uc
The URL can be accessed several ways providing programmatic access. Read the FAQs to learn more.
Does not allow auto updates.

I’m going to try both for the helluva it.

Turns out the Chromium-web-store is much easier because, once installed, it allows you to navigate to the chrome web store, pick an extension, and click “Add to Chromium.” Simple as that.

Note: I’m installing Startpage Privacy Protection and uBlock Origin extensions as well for more privacy.

Downloading and installing the CRX file is a bit more involved, but not difficult. For now I’m going to stick with Chromium-web-store.

Parting Words

With the Chromium-web-store extension, I’m easily able to install the Airtable web clipper, Startpage Privacy Protection, and uBlock Origin extensions. All without signing into google.

They look great!

At the end of the day, privacy is all about direction not perfection. It is IMPOSSIBLE to hide all of your data. But migrating away from data invasive services and slowly integrating privacy preserving tech into your stack will pay dividends down the road.

Like you, I have a long way to go on my privacy journey. I still use Youtube (NewPipe helps), I’m not a nym, and I still use a gmail account from time to time, but I have far more control of my data than I did even a few months ago.

Give yourself the option to reveal your data when you want to by migrating to privacy preserving tech like Ungoogled Chromium.

Looking for more awesome privacy apps?

Consider these resources:

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