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
March 13th, 2009 at 6:52 pm
Thanks Brett, that was cool. It works just fine with your startup parameters.
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.
March 25th, 2009 at 7:12 pm
Nice work! I just made a special Netflix-Chromium shortcut and it works perfectly.
March 31st, 2009 at 9:05 am
Thanks it works great
April 2nd, 2009 at 6:41 pm
Thanks Brett! Great workaround!
April 6th, 2009 at 5:44 pm
thank you so MUCH!! google should kiss your a*s! I LOVE YOU!
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
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
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.
May 3rd, 2009 at 1:59 pm
Like the rest, thanks for sharing this great workaround.
June 6th, 2009 at 7:00 pm
Thanks!! :-)
June 7th, 2009 at 9:13 am
Perfect…worked like a charm
June 11th, 2009 at 5:03 am
Thanks for the useful info. It's so interesting
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. :)
July 12th, 2009 at 8:59 pm
Thanks for the tip, I think I will use it on the podcast this week.
July 29th, 2009 at 6:12 am
wow! you need to get on Google's payroll!
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
August 6th, 2009 at 11:32 pm
I am getting the same "not valid" error as Wes. Any suggestions on why that might be?
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!
August 28th, 2009 at 7:57 am
great job..it works like charm
September 1st, 2009 at 10:13 am
any way to get this working on mac?
September 2nd, 2009 at 8:52 pm
I'm having the same issue as Wes and Jace. Are we missing something?
September 26th, 2009 at 4:05 am
would this work in Chromium in Ubuntu?
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"
January 6th, 2010 at 7:06 pm
does not work on a mac, tried both ways. Any solutions.
February 12th, 2010 at 5:16 am
Works on Snow Leopard.
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?
May 16th, 2010 at 2:14 am
How to work on Mac?!?!
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.
August 9th, 2010 at 1:47 pm
I like Alex need to know if this can be fixed for Mac.
September 4th, 2010 at 11:21 am
Great fix, worked like a charm!
September 16th, 2010 at 3:55 pm
As of today, September 16, 2010, Netflix Streaming is now supported on Chrome! So the above is no longer needed unless they end up unsupporting it again.
December 7th, 2010 at 2:03 am
Another work around is to simply use the Chrome IE Tab extension.
I have one PC where netflix works perfectly in chrome without any special work around, but on my gaming PC I just use the IE Tab.
Thanks for the command line work around. The sad thing is that Netflix (and many other sites out there are guilty of it, too) should NOT waste time preventing people from running something in a non-supported environment. Just write an entry that if you aren't using what they support, they will not spend their time helping you but let us try anyway.
December 7th, 2010 at 2:04 am
[[follow up]]…apparently they stopped supporting it again, or perhaps it is because I am using the beta copy of chrome on my gaming PC.
December 17th, 2010 at 11:29 am
Marc:
It was working just fine yesterday, and all of a sudden Chrome is no longer working today. This is REALLY annoying.. it's been fine for MONTHS.
December 21st, 2010 at 2:51 pm
This worked great for netflix, however i noticed that files i download are in a mac format, anyway to fix this?
February 21st, 2011 at 11:05 pm
I have a question. I have a Chrome Laptop from Google (yeah I'm a beta tester) any idea how I could do this as it is Chrome OS? Thanks.
March 7th, 2011 at 9:53 am
@Frank!m: I am so jealous! I'd love to help you with getting Chrome OS to run Netflix. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to get on the beta testers list. Somebody needs to pull some strings for me at Google! :-)
May 12th, 2011 at 2:03 pm
It worked great for me, thanks for the tweek. We need more developers out there that are willing to share their talent.