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Run Chromium with command-line switches

There are command-line switches that Chromium (and Chrome) accept in order to enable particular features or modify otherwise default functionality.

There is no list of all switches, but most of the existing switches can be found at https://peter.sh/examples/?/chromium-switches.html.

Note: Chrome switches (e.g., --incognito) and Chrome flags (e.g., chrome://flags/#ignore-gpu-blocklist) are separate configurations. Some features can be enabled by a command-line switch, flag or both.

It is important to note that some switches are intended for development and temporary cases. They may break, change, or be removed in the future without notice. IT admins looking to manage Chrome for their organization should instead use enterprise policies.

Note that if you look at chrome://flags to see if the command-line option is active, the state might not be accurately reflected. Check chrome://version for the complete command-line used in the current instance.

Windows

  1. Exit any running-instance of Chrome (e.g., navigate to chrome://quit).
  2. Right click on your "Chrome" shortcut.
  3. Choose properties.
  4. At the end of your "Target:" line add the command-line switch. For example:
    • --disable-gpu-vsync
  5. With that example flag, it should look like below (replacing "--disable-gpu-vsync" with any other command-line switch you want to use): chrome.exe --disable-gpu-vsync
  6. Launch Chrome like normal with the shortcut.

macOS

  1. Quit any running instance of Chrome (by navigating to chrome://quit).

  2. Run your favorite Terminal application.

  3. In the terminal, run commands like below (replacing "--remote-debugging-port=9222" with any other command-line switch you want to use):

    /Applications/Chromium.app/Contents/MacOS/Chromium --remote-debugging-port=9222
# For Google Chrome you'll need to escape spaces like so:
/Applications/Google\ Chrome.app/Contents/MacOS/Google\ Chrome --remote-debugging-port=9222

Linux

  1. Quit any running instance of Chrome (e.g., navigate to chrome://quit).

  2. Run your favorite terminal emulator.

  3. In the terminal, run commands like below (replacing "--remote-debugging-port=9222" with any other command-line switch you want to use):

    chromium-browser --remote-debugging-port=9222
google-chrome --foo --bar=2

iOS

If you are building Chromium from the source, you can run it with command-line switches by adding them in the Experimental Settings.

  1. Open the Settings app
  2. Go to Chromium/Experimental Settings
  3. Add your switches in the "Extra flags (one per line)". Don't forget to switch on the "Append Extra Flags" setting.

It is not possible to run with flags the official releases (Google Chrome from App Store or Testflight).

V8 Flags

V8 can take a number of flags (command-line switches) as well, via Chrome's js-flags flag. For example, this traces V8 optimizations:

chrome.exe --js-flags="--trace-opt --trace-deopt --trace-bailout"

To get a listing of all possible V8 flags:

chrome.exe --js-flags="--help"

Browse the V8 docs for more flags for V8.

Android

Visit about:version to review the command-line switches that are effective in the app.

If you are running on a rooted device or using a debug build of Chromium, then you can set switches like so:

out/Default/bin/chrome_public_apk argv  # Show existing switches
out/Default/bin/content_shell_apk argv --args='--foo --bar'  # Set new switches

You can also install, set switches, and launch with a single command:

out/Default/bin/chrome_public_apk run --args='--foo --bar'
out/Default/bin/content_shell_apk run  # Clears any existing switches

For production build on a non-rooted device, you need to enable "Enable command line on non-rooted devices" in chrome://flags, then set command-line in /data/local/tmp/chrome-command-line. When doing that, mind that the first command-line item should be a "_" (underscore) followed by the ones you actually need. Finally, manually restart Chrome ("Relaunch" from chrome://flags page might no be enough to trigger reading this file). See https://crbug.com/784947.

ContentShell on Android

There's an alternative method for setting command-line switches with ContentShell that doesn't require building yourself:

  1. Download a LKGR build of Android.
  2. This will include both ChromePublic.apk and ContentShell.apk
  3. Install ContentShell APK to your device.
  4. Run this magic incantation
adb shell am start \
  -a android.intent.action.VIEW \
  -n org.chromium.content_shell_apk/.ContentShellActivity \
  --es activeUrl "http://chromium.org" \
  --esa commandLineArgs --show-paint-rects,--show-property-changed-rects

This will launch contentshell with the supplied switches. You can apply whatever commandLineArgs you want in that syntax.

Android WebView

This is documented in the chromium tree.

Chrome OS

  1. Put the device into dev mode, disable rootfs verification, and bring up a command prompt.
  2. Modify /etc/chrome_dev.conf (read the comments in the file for more details).
  3. Restart the UI via: sudo restart ui