Auto update chrome extensions outside web store

Question

Chrome automatically updates your installed extensions if they where installed through the web store. On the other hand, if you're using an extension that isn't posted there, you can manually add it to chrome, but you can't auto update the extension. You have to download the updated extension, open the extension page and drag/drop the new file there to update it.

Is there any way to auto update extensions outside the web store? I don't know if its possible to add the extension web as trusted URL for autoupdate or something like that, so Chrome would also check for updates there.

Answer 1

A solution has been described by Google:

If you're hosting your own extension or app, you need to add the "update_url" field to your manifest.json file, like this: { "name": "My extension", ... "update_url": "http://myhost.com/mytestextension/updates.xml", ... }

See https://developer.chrome.com/apps/autoupdate#update_url for more details.

Answer 2

Autoupdate for off-store apps is no more available because of new security rules:

https://developer.chrome.com/extensions/autoupdate

As of M33, Windows stable/beta channel users can only download extensions hosted in the Chrome Web Store (see Protecting Windows users from malicious extensions).

More information:

https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/2811969?p=ui_remove_non_cws_extensions

The only way to use these "private" extensions without the store is to remove the update_url key from the manifest.json and update them manually by drag'n'drop new versions to the extensions page.