How to change the version of Chrome?

Question

I am using a specific Chrome build that I prefer over the latest build. Whenever I log into outlook.com now I am getting a "please update your browser to the latest version" message I have to click past before I can access my emails. There is nothing wrong with the build I am using so is there a way to fool outlook.com and change Chrome's version number?

The latest is 33.0.1750.154 so I would have to change it to that. I am on 28.0.1500.95 and updates are disabled. I found a reference to this in the registry and changed it but it didn't change the number on the 'about chrome' page. Any ideas?

Answer 1

Easiest thing to do is create a new desktop shortcut to use exclusively for Outlook access or just all the time for everything. This will result in sites seeing you as having the latest version of Chrome. Assuming you're using Windows, do the following:

1) Start by right clicking on desktop, New > Shortcut.

2) On the first screen paste the following into the Type the location of the item: input box:

"C:\Program Files (x86)\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe" --user-agent="Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/33.0.1750.154 Safari/537.36"

(I'm assuming chrome.exe lives in that location; if not adjust the path as required.)

3) Click the Next button.

4) On the second screen give the shortcut a name, e.g. Chrome for Outlook.com access

5) Click the Finish button.

As time moves on and new versions of Chrome are released you'll want to update your shortcut to reflect these new releases (else you may be caught out again!). You can probably glean the latest user agent strings from a site like http://www.useragentstring.com/pages/useragentstring.php

Answer 2

You can use User-Agent Switcher

Description

Switches User-Agent strings to mimic, spoof or fake other browsers or bots.

The User Agent Switcher changes your user agent to spoof other devices and/or browsers. You can put on your IE hat and slip past virtual bouncers into Internet Explorer-only websites; blend in as an iPhone or see how sites render when they think you're Google's search spider.

User-Agent Switcher is simple, yet powerful. It adds a toolbar button that you can use to toggle between different commonly used user agent strings, or you can enter your own.

User Agent Switcher overrides Chrome's default user agent, tricking websites into thinking you’re using a different browser.

What’s a User Agent?

A user agent is a small text description of your device that is sent with every web request. Websites can detect the browser you’re using and serve different content - this is why iPhone and Android users see special mobile websites when they browse the web.

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