How to Install Google Chrome Web Browser on Ubuntu 20.04

Google Chrome is the most widely used web browser in the world. It is fast, easy to use, and secure browser built for the modern web.

Chrome is available for all major operating systems and hardware platforms and allows you to synchronize your bookmarks, history, and passwords on all your devices.

This article explains how to install the Google Chrome web browser on Ubuntu 20.04.

Installing Google Chrome on Ubuntu #

Chrome is not an open-source browser, and it is not included in the standard Ubuntu repositories. Installing Chrome browser on Ubuntu is a pretty straightforward process. We’ll download the installation file from the official website and install it from the command-line.

Perform the following steps to install Chrome browser on your Ubuntu system:

1. Downloading Google Chrome #

Open your terminal either by using the Ctrl+Alt+T keyboard shortcut or by clicking on the terminal icon.

Use wget to download the latest Google Chrome .deb package :

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

2. Installing Google Chrome #

Installing packages on Ubuntu requires administrative privileges. Running the following command as a user with sudo privileges to install Chrome .deb package on your system:

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

When prompted, enter your user password, and the installation will start.

At this point, you have Chrome installed on your Ubuntu system.

Starting Google Chrome #

In the Activities search bar type “Google Chrome” and click on the icon to launch the application:

Chrome can also be launched from the command-line by typing google-chrome.

When you start Google Chrome for the first time, a window like the following will appear asking if you want to make Google Chrome your default browser and to send usage statistic and crash reports to Google:

Select according to your preference, and click OK to proceed.

Google Chrome will open, and you’ll see the default Chrome welcome page.

From here, you can sign-in to Chrome with your Google account, change the browser settings and install addons.

Updating Google Chrome #

During the installation process, the official Google repository will be added to your system. You can use the cat command to verify the file contents:

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

The output will look something like this:

### 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

This ensures that your Google Chrome installation will be updated automatically when a new version is released through your desktop standard Software Update tool.

Conclusion #

We’ve shown you how to install Google Chrome on your Ubuntu 20.04 desktop machine.

If you’ve previously used a different browser, like Firefox, Chromium or Opera, you can import your bookmarks and settings into Chrome.

Feel free to leave a comment below.