I have a Chrome App crx file published in 2013 that I would like to run. Modern Chrome refuses and fails to run it for a variety of reasons, including deprecation of Chrome Apps in 2020, extension security changes in 2022, javascript API changes over many different versions, etc. Older versions of Chrome tend to not work on modern OSes for various library and interface related reasons.

I have a Chrome App crx file published in 2013 that I would like to run. Modern Chrome refuses and fails to run it for a variety of reasons, including deprecation of Chrome Apps in 2020, extension security changes in 2022, javascript API changes over many different versions, etc. Older versions of Chrome tend to not work on modern OSes for various library and interface related reasons.

• javascript
• google-chrome
• google-chrome-extension

Share Improve this question Follow asked Mar 6 at 18:01 SparrSparr 7,7403636 silver badges5050 bronze badges 1

• FWIW any Chromium version even before 2013 runs in the non-modern Windows 10 directly. – woxxom Commented Mar 6 at 23:52

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The contents of the extension could be served as normal html and javascript from a web server. This will require making code changes, eliminating every use of Chrome app/extension-specific APIs and replacing them with equivalent core javascript APIs or other libraries (e.g. replacing chrome.storage.local with window.localStorage, which has very different methods).

This approach may encounter CORS limitations in situations where apps/extensions were allowed to make CORS-violating requests but "third party" pages and scripts cannot.

1. Create a VM.
2. Install an older OS, Windows or Linux from the same time period the app was published.
3. Install the version of Chrome from that same time period.
4. Run the app within that VM.