Google-chrome – Where to download the last Chrome version with Java (NPAPI) support

chromiumgoogle-chromejavanpapi

The Google Chrome browser version 45 completely dropped support for NPAPI in September 2015. This means plugins for Java, Silverlight, Facebook Video and other similar NPAPI based plugins will no longer run in Chrome.

Where can I download the last stable release of Chrome or Chromium (for OS X / Windows / Linux) which still had Java / NPAPI support?

Other info: http://www.chromium.org/developers/npapi-deprecation

Edit: My reason for the question is that a web-app, which requires Flash and Java, suddenly stopped working. So I'm looking for a quick workaround to temporarily run the old version of Chrome side-by-side with the current version. – Also for web-development I'm used to be able to do some testing with previous versions. From my experience with Firefox, I am able to do this without jumping through lots of hoops, as Firefox makes all old versions available for download! I do not understand the policy of Google in this regard.

In researching this, the top hit on Google for 'Chrome 45 Java' does not answer the issue at all: 'How to enable Java in Google Chrome 45'. Other links only recommend to switch browsers. On the StackExchange sites, I could not find this particular question or a download link to Chrome 44. The reason for asking this here, is to help users or web developers, who may be looking for the same thing and to possibly find a download source similar to the Firefox archive.

Best Answer

The last stable release of Chrome 44 would be 44.0.2403.157 for Windows, Mac, and Linux, as stated in this blog post: googlechromereleases.blogspot.com/2015/08/stable-channel-update_20.html. As Chrome is no longer availabe from any official sources, the alternative is to look for the last Chromium 44 release in the continuous builds archive.

The direct links are:

To enable the NPAPI plugins, follow these Steps:

  1. Open a new tab and enter chrome://flags/#enable-npapi
  2. Enable NPAPI Mac, Windows: click "Enable"
  3. At the bottom of the page click "Relunch Now"
  4. Test with www.java.com/en/download/installed.jsp
  5. right-click to run the plugin, and allow after prompting

Chromium will not auto-update, thus this will keep on working albeit without any security updates, so use at your own risk (better in a VM). - More versions can be found by following the step-by-step instructions for Downloading old builds of Chromium: www.chromium.org/getting-involved/download-chromium

Chrome 44 is much harder to locate than Chromium. One way is to search for googlechrome.dmg on the HD or in old backups and verify the version from the Info.plist, if you're using OS X.

File Hippo lists previous versions with the correct MD5 hashes, but always links to the latest official one. This information still helps, as the MD5 can be used to find out, if an unofficial source has the original file. Here is one such file with Chrome 44.0.2403.130 on SourceForge: sourceforge.net/projects/gnuhub/files/googlechrome.dmg/download - The MD5 is listed here filehippo.com/download_google_chrome_for_mac/tech/62573 2E0A856BF525D196323890D72A80E902 If you trust the source of the MD5 hash, then the file should be trustworthy, but Google does not publish the hashes of their releases. The same steps can be followed to locate a windows version of Chrome 44 by searching for chrome_installer.exe.

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