How to: Watch Netflix in Chrome

Screenshot of Netflix loading in Chrome

I just recently started playing with Chrome and after a bit of investigation I think I am going to make the switch from my current browser Maxthon. One problem I noticed when using Chrome was I could no longer watch instant movies in Netflix. Now, I could do what they recommend and use Internet Explorer (or Maxthon) to view a movie but I’m stubborn and wanted to view it in Chrome so I found a way.

When Netflix loads a video it is using Microsoft Silverlight which is something that Chrome supports and gave me my first clue that there is no reason why Chrome shouldn’t be able to view a Netflix video. The solution was actually rather simple, tell Netflix that I’m not actually using Chrome but using Safari on the Mac. In order to do this you just have to add the following parameter when starting Chrome.

 --user-agent="Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10_5_3; en-us) AppleWebKit/525.19 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.2.1 Safari/525.19"

Add Parameter to Google Chrome Startup

To add this parameter right click the Google Chrome shortcut and go down to Properties. Then after chrome.exe in the Target: box paste the above text (make sure you include a space after chrome.exe).

I also tried changing the user agent to make Chrome appear like it is Internet Explorer. After applying that change Netflix gave me a activeX not supported error (image below). Since the problem was solved with the Safari user-agent text above I wasn’t too worried about it.

ActiveX is disabled

This entry was posted on Friday, March 13th, 2009 at 11:03 am and is filed under HTML/CSS. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

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29 Responses to “How to: Watch Netflix in Chrome”

Arif Says:
March 13th, 2009 at 6:52 pm
Thanks Brett, that was cool. It works just fine with your startup parameters.
Will Says:
March 25th, 2009 at 4:13 pm
Awesome, thanks! There’s another solution floating around that suggests you make chrome spoof firefox instead, which works, but breaks gmail. Yours, however, works for both. Kickass.
Patrick Says:
March 25th, 2009 at 7:12 pm
Nice work! I just made a special Netflix-Chromium shortcut and it works perfectly.
Dave Says:
March 31st, 2009 at 9:05 am
Thanks it works great
Chris Says:
April 2nd, 2009 at 6:41 pm
Thanks Brett! Great workaround!
pnutlmclain Says:
April 6th, 2009 at 5:44 pm
thank you so MUCH!! google should kiss your a*s! I LOVE YOU!
farvgnugn Says:
April 16th, 2009 at 8:52 pm
Didn’t work…. Netflix wanted me to install Silverlight.2.0.dmg and my PC doesn’t know what a .dmg file is
omg Says:
May 1st, 2009 at 2:05 am
I was wondering if you knew how to change the shortcut target info while using Google Chrome Portable off of Portableapps.com Suite?

http://portableapps.com/node/18051#comment-118212

Since it won’t display a “shortcut” tab
omg Says:
May 1st, 2009 at 7:52 pm
Got it to work with some help, following this link http://portableapps.com/node/18051#comment-118248 and scrolling to the bottom of the page will explain it.
CW Says:
May 3rd, 2009 at 1:59 pm
Like the rest, thanks for sharing this great workaround.
know man Says:
June 6th, 2009 at 7:00 pm
Thanks!! :-)
DD Says:
June 7th, 2009 at 9:13 am
Perfect…worked like a charm
JamesD Says:
June 11th, 2009 at 5:03 am
Thanks for the useful info. It’s so interesting
Maya Says:
July 5th, 2009 at 8:27 pm
Thanks so much for this, worked like a charm!! Now I may indeed completely abandon my other browsers. :)
Sean Says:
July 12th, 2009 at 8:59 pm
Thanks for the tip, I think I will use it on the podcast this week.
Fred Says:
July 29th, 2009 at 6:12 am
wow! you need to get on Google’s payroll!
Wes Says:
August 4th, 2009 at 5:38 pm
I keep getting a “not valid” error when I try and apply it. I am using windows xp SP3
Jace Says:
August 6th, 2009 at 11:32 pm
I am getting the same “not valid” error as Wes. Any suggestions on why that might be?
mke Says:
August 23rd, 2009 at 5:05 pm
@farvgnugn and other with similar problems. you have to install silverlight for windows direct from microsoft’s website FIRST, never mind the caution that it doesn’t work on chrome. THEN apply the nifty little fix detailed on this page. worked for me!
annk Says:
August 28th, 2009 at 7:57 am
great job..it works like charm
Nick Says:
September 1st, 2009 at 10:13 am
any way to get this working on mac?
Alan Says:
September 2nd, 2009 at 8:52 pm
I’m having the same issue as Wes and Jace. Are we missing something?
jp Says:
September 26th, 2009 at 4:05 am
would this work in Chromium in Ubuntu?
TS Says:
December 8th, 2009 at 7:24 pm
This works on Mac if you do this in Terminal (not sure how to do this with a normal app icon): /Applications/Google\ Chrome.app/Contents/MacOS/Google\ Chrome –user-agent=”Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10_5_3; en-us) AppleWebKit/525.19 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.2.1 Safari/525.19″
toots Says:
January 6th, 2010 at 7:06 pm
does not work on a mac, tried both ways. Any solutions.
CB Says:
February 12th, 2010 at 5:16 am
Works on Snow Leopard.
leopard Says:
April 10th, 2010 at 12:53 pm
whether on terminal or appending to icon, it is not working. is there an update for this fix?
Boko577 Says:
May 16th, 2010 at 2:14 am
How to work on Mac?!?!
Alex Johnson Says:
June 22nd, 2010 at 8:01 pm
I am an idiot and have no real clue what I am doing could you tell me how to access this on a mac since we have no access to a ‘properties’ tab. Please don’t mock me to much, I just want to enjoy netflix on chrome.