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How to make Google Chrome definitely remain as the desktop version?

Every time I use Google Chrome it returns to the setting for mobile.

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  • 1
    I've resorted to just not closing the tab, but there might be a flag to set it permanently.
    – Matthew Read
    Aug 5, 2016 at 21:37

3 Answers 3

Reset to default
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There's a method suggested here, based on this XDA thread for both rooted and non rooted devices:

Rooted Devices

  • First Method: Download a file ( chrome-command-line) mentioned in the article, change it's properties and place in appropriate directory, relaunch Chrome

  • Second Method: From the XDA thread linked, download ChromeDE.zip and flash

Since I don't have access to PC, tried the second method and it worked. Chrome now opens in default desktop mode ( Moto X Play, 6.0.1, Chrome 52.0. 2743.91)

Unrooted Devices (not tried by me)

  • Download the file mentioned in first method above

  • Using adb , enter

    adb push /chrome-command-line /data/local/chrome-command-line

Thanks for asking this, I have been wanting to do this but was too lazy to search

Edit: User Agent Switcher app for rooted devices can do the same, and in addition offers a host of other choices and creating shortcuts

enter image description here

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New method for Un-rooted devices

There is a new flag that's just been implemented to enable this on un-rooted devices in Chrome but its just in the Canary version currently.

  1. Install the latest Chrome from the Play Store.
  2. After its installed go into chrome://flags
  3. Search for 'command line' and it should come up with an option:
    • Enable command line on non-rooted devices
  4. Change the value to Enabled
  5. Install ADB and the USB drivers for your phone (See XDA developers article or Google)

  6. Download the chrome-command-line.txt file as in the XDA article and rename it without the .txt on the end. The content will be:

     chrome --user-agent="Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64) AppleWebKit/537.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/22.0.1207.1 Safari/537.1"

  7. Using ADB you can now transfer the chrome-command-line file over to the /tmp folder, which does not need root permissions, using:

    adb push c:\tempadb\chrome-command-line /data/local/tmp/chrome-command-line

  8. Restart Chrome and you should now effectively have desktop mode all the time.

According to the change log, the feature was implemented by Lei Tian, so a big thanks to him. Details of the change can be found here:

https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src.git/+/bd5a3bf9cfeac08e9fbaae39b7f18a67c079bf96

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  • Thanks so much. It's maddening that they are selling tablets today that are more powerful and have more screen real state than a desktop from a few years ago, but they are forcing you to use "mobile websites". This method worked like a charm.
    – Martin Argerami
    Mar 22, 2020 at 16:05
  • Thank you! It works, but unfortunately I get this message in every tab: "You are using an unsupported command-line flag: CommandLineOnNonRooted. Stability and security will suffer." I tried adding "--test-type" to the command line, but it didn't work. Any suggestions?
    – Sybren
    Jun 28, 2020 at 11:02
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If you are running any specific web based application through Android tablets that need zoom in out by default (That is request desktop site ) setting as default

  1. Enable Request desktop site setting
  2. create a desktop short cut From **more tools > Add to desktop
  3. Enable Open as windows tick mark
  4. give a name and save it

Then open the short cut in desktop, the settings will be saved by default to request desktop site

Now you can Zoom in out anytime as per your need when ever you use that short cut

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