Installing the Chromium Web Browser on a Raspberry Pi

In this guide, we will be showing you how to set up the Google Chromium Web browser on the Raspberry Pi.

Raspberry Pi Chromium Web Browser

Chrome, one of the most popular web browsers in the world, is sadly not supported on the Raspberry Pi’s hardware. There are no builds of the Chrome web browser for any ARM-based desktop except for the Chromebooks, which unfortunately won’t support the Pi’s hardware.

To get around this, we can use the open-source version of Chrome on our Raspberry Pi called Chromium.

The Chromium web browser is the open-source version of Chrome. For the most part, it features the same functionality as Chrome.

However, it is missing out on some functionality that is not allowed to be included with the open-source version. These features are the proprietary libraries used for digital rights management.

Sadly this means you will not be able to view streaming services like Netflix or Amazon Prime on your Raspberry Pi using the Chromium web browser.

Please note that Chromium is included as the default web browser in the desktop version of Raspberry Pi OS stretch and later.

Equipment List

Below is the list of equipment that we used to install the Chromium web browser on our Raspberry Pi.

Recommended

Optional

Installing the Chromium Browser on the Raspberry Pi

In this section, we will walk you through the steps to installing the Chromium web browser on your Raspberry Pi.

Luckily for us, Chromium is available through the Raspberry Pi OS repository. This saves us what would have been a fairly long compilation time.

The code repository for Chromium weighs in at over 10gb, so the time needed to download it would have taken considerable time.

1. Before we can install the Chrome web browser, we need first to update the package list.

To update the package list, you will need to use the command below.

sudo apt update

2. Next, we want to upgrade all of the packages we already have installed.

To run a full upgrade, you can use the following command.

sudo apt full-upgrade

3. With everything up to date, we can now install the Chromium web browser.

To install the browser, you need to run the following command on your Raspberry Pi.

sudo apt install chromium-browser -y

This will install the version of the web browser that is provided from the Raspberry Pi OS repository.

This build of Chromium has special optimizations for the Raspberry Pi compiled into it.

Running the Chromium Web Browser

There are two different ways that you can launch the Chromium web browser on your Raspberry Pi.

Using the Terminal

There are a variety of advantages to using the terminal. You can pass in flags that allow you to control the behavior of the web browser.

Such as being able to switch it to kiosk mode.

1. To launch the web browser, all you need to do is enter the following command.

chromium-browser

Using the Desktop

1. It is easy to open the web browser through the Raspbian desktop.

All you need to do is click the globe icon that is located on the taskbar.

You can also find the web browser through the start menu. However, the taskbar is the fastest way to open the web browser.

Raspberry Pi Chromium Web Browser Desktop Icon

2. You should now have the Chromium web browser open on your Raspberry Pi.

Chromium Web Browser running on the Raspberry Pi

At this point, you should now have successfully installed the Chromium web browser to your Raspberry Pi.

While lacking some features of the full Chrome browser, it is still highly capable and gives you all the advantages of its HTML, CSS, and JS engine.

If you have run into any issues with installing the web browser on your Pi, feel free to leave a comment below.

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2 Comments

  1. Avatar for Ole Jensen
    Ole Jensen on

    chromium-browser needs a newer version of libwidevinecdm0 to run with prime video.
    Prime says that the browser is out of date and won’t work after Dec 6.

    Where can we get an updated libwidevinecdm0 that will work with prime?

    When will there be a version of chromium for rpi 64bit?

    1. Avatar for Emmet
      Emmet on
      Editor

      Hi Ole,

      Sadly, this is completely up to whoever manages the package for the Raspberry Pi OS repository who is reliant from what I understand on whatever version Google is shipping for their Chromebooks.

      In terms of a 64-bit release, the reason they don’t have that is Google has no released an ARM64 version of widevine.

      Cheers,
      Emmet