Why I’m Still Using Chromium for Mac over Chrome

chromium-for-mac

After a long wait and much hoopla, Google finally released their Chrome browser for Mac OS X this week. I did install it because I prefer using Google’s slimmer and brisk browser. But after a day or two of using the official beta build, I dumped it in favor of Chromium. In a sense, you could say I’m still using Chrome because it’s built upon Chromium. However, Chromium offers at least two features over the current version of Chrome: native bookmark sync and extension support.

The bookmark support function is the same that’s already in the Windows version of Chrome, so with Chromium, I can synchronize my bookmarks between Windows and Mac. It’s extremely fast and only requires that you sign in using your Google account. Once you’ve done that, bookmarks are quietly managed in the background, so it’s a fire and forget feature.

Also native to the latest builds of Chromium is extension support. I’ve heard that this is coming to Chrome for Mac very soon, but with Chromium, you don’t have to wait. Simply tapping Window –> Extensions in the Chromium menu bar brings up your installed extensions. Alternatively, you can just type chrome://extensions/ in the Chromium URL bar to get there. Currently, I have only two extensions installed, but there’s already a few hundred available.

One that I’m using is similar to the Gmail Notifier for Mac application — it routinely checks my personal Gmail account for new mail and shows the number of unread messages. Clicking the icon opens up a Gmail tab in Chromium and takes me right to my inbox. I also installed a Facebook extension that allows me to see the latest posts on my wall with one click. An expanding window appears to show my Facebook feed and I can even make comments or like items.

Although I’m not a big user of extensions — which is partly why I haven’t embraced Firefox — there are already some of immediate value. And if can combine those with the speed of Chrome as well as native bookmark synchronization, it’s a win-win for me. Bear in mind that Chromium is really the development platform for Chrome itself. While it works just fine and is generally stable for my activities, there is risk of crashes and unsupported functionality. If you’re interested in giving it a try for Mac, you can find the latest builds right here. There are usually several new builds each day and Chromium doesn’t auto-update, so you may want to check back often. I installed my version again yesterday and I’m already 11 builds behind. ;) Or you can simply install this homebrewed Chromium updater and run it from time to time..

loading

Comments have been disabled for this post