While Chrome has features that make it a compelling alternative browser to Mobile Safari, its stifled by iOS’ lack of native integration with non-default browsers. Even if you prefer Chrome, your iPhone will still open links to Mobile Safari. We recently featured Ryan Petrich’s BrowserChooser as a Cydia tweak which can set Chrome as the default browser. Unfortunately, BrowserChooser is only available in Petrich’s private repository. If you don’t want to go through the trouble of adding the repository, there is another tweak called Open in Chrome, which is available in the default repositories.
Open in Chrome isn’t as polished as BrowserChooser; all outgoing links still say Open in Safari. Otherwise, on the iPhone, it works fine. Chrome opens instead of Safari. You can switch it off in Settings.
The iPad is a different story. The tweak is installed and enabled by default, but it currently doesn’t do anything. Links open to Safari as usual. My suspicion is that it was made specifically for the iPhone version of Chrome, without taking the iPad into account. This lack of support is disappointing as the iPad version of Chrome is closer to its popular desktop counterpart; I would be more likely to use Chrome as the default browser on my iPad than on my iPhone.
Open in Chrome does not yet work on the iPad; currently it just opens in Safari
While Open in Chrome does not support the iPad, BrowserChooser does. If have an iPad, you will still want to install Petrich’s tweak from his repository (here is a guide on how to do so). If you only have an iPhone or iPod Touch, Petrich’s app is still the superior tweak, but you can install quickly Open in Chrome as another free alternative.
What tweaks would you like to see for the Google Chrome Browser? I wouldn’t mind the ability to add other search engines to the address bar. Share your thoughts in the comments section below.
Chrome for iOS is much slower than safari and the memory management is far worse, at least in my iPhone 4S and iPad. Cant imagine making it my default browser.
I find it doesn’t really matter on the iPad 3. I’ve got it running alongside other apps in a window under Quasar.
Although I prefer Chrome on my ipad due to its syncing capability, Safari is much much more smoother in terms of operations such as scrolling. There is the universal scroll stutter found in all 3rd party browsers other than safari. Im talking about the ipad 3 here.
Quasar has too many bugs
Hi Mike, I’m the developer of Open in Chrome. It should be fully compatible with all iOS devices, I’ve tested it on the iPad myself and I haven’t heard of any issues with it not working at all on the iPad until now. Maybe another package you’re using is conflicting with it? Quasar would be my guess.
Also, you can already change the search engine for Chrome in the app’s settings, so there’s no need for a separate tweak for that :)
If you asked me last week, I would have agreed but I’ve found it’s been lot more stable since the last update. Day and night difference.
I’ll pass that correction on to my editor. Shame about the lack of Quasar compatibility… There’s no conflict with BrowserChooser.
You can change the search engine in Chrome, but only to presets like Yahoo and Bing. Other engines like DuckDuckGo are a no-go. I’ve manually edited the search engine list for Safari, but it doesn’t affect Chrome.
Well I’m not 100% it’s Quasar, I’ll have to test it out to see what might be conflicting with it. For all I know it could be because you also have BrowserChooser installed? Seeing as they do almost the same thing, I wouldn’t be surprised if BrowserChooser “overrides” Open in Chrome, so to speak.
Ah yes, that is true. Would be nice to have a tweak for that too.
I did not have BrowserChooser installed when I was testing Open In Chrome. It would defeat the purpose to have redundant tweaks on my iPad.
In fact, I just confirmed that the incompatibility is with Quasar. Open in Chrome works when Quasar disabled.
Haha I know, but it was worth a check.
Well I’m glad you found the source of the issue! I’ll look into why that’s happening – it’s likely that Quasar is intercepting the URL before Open in Chrome does. Should be able to fix it for the next update.