Once prompted by Chrome that a domain's certificate is unsafe, or when experiencing issues with HSTS, you can type thisisunsafe
with the tab open to permanently whitelist the domain and proceed anyway.
In order to make Google Chrome display a single website with no other distractions and without the ability to browse away, the Google Chrome shortcut can be edited in order to append a few command line switches to the executable.
For example, the following edit of the Target
field of the Google Chrome shortcut:
"C:\Program Files\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe" --window-size="1024,768" --user-data-dir="%tmp%\chrome_tmp_user_dir~%RANDOM%" --host-rules="MAP * media.lan" --app=http://media.lan/
will make Google Chrome open a single website, namely media.lan
. The parameters are as follows:
–window-size
sets the window size of the Chrome browser to a specific value, in this case 1024x768
,-user-data-dir
stores the user data in a random folder (necessary for allowing the –window-size
flag to work),–host-rules
will make it such that the browser will not be able to navigate away from the media.lan
domain,–app
will load the http://media.lan
URL in an application window with an URL and the rest of the UI elements.There are some useful applications for this mode. For instance, Google Chrome could be used as a frontend to media players such as JellyFin or Plex or even used to create a standalone YouTube application.
For instance, a shortcut can be created to the Google Chrome executable, named "YouTube" and the shortcut edited in order to change the Target
parameter to:
"C:\Program Files\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe" --window-size="1024,758" --user-data-dir="%tmp%\chrome_tmp_user_dir~%RANDOM%" --host-rules="MAP * www.youtube.com" --app=https://www.youtube.com/
Now, by clicking the shortcut, Google Chrome will load YouTube separately from any other browser.
In order to remove the popup stating that the operating system should be upgraded to Windows 10 in order to receive further updates just create a file on the desktop named oswarning.reg
with the following contents:
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00 [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Google\Chrome] "SuppressUnsupportedOSWarning"=dword:00000001
Double-click the file to insert the contents into the registry and upon the next launch Google Chrome should not complain about the Operating System being deprecated.