Install Chrome extension form outside the Chrome Web Store

Question

I have developed a Chrome extension and I have packed it.
I sent my extension to some people to try it, but Chrome started to block extensions that it does not find in the s

Answer 1

For Windows, you can also whitelist your extension through Windows policies. The full steps are details in this answer, but there are quicker steps:

1. Create the registry key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Google\Chrome\ExtensionInstallWhitelist.
2. For each extension you want to whitelist, add a string value whose name should be a sequence number (starting at 1) and value is the extension ID.

For instance, in order to whitelist 2 extensions with ID aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa and bbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbb, create a string value with name 1 and value aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa, and a second value with name 2 and value bbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbb. This can be sum up by this registry file:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Google\Chrome]

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Google\Chrome\ExtensionInstallWhitelist]
"1"="aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa"
"2"="bbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbb"

EDIT: actually, Chromium docs also indicate how to do it for other OS.