In this post I will walk through on how to import and configure Google Chrome Group Policy. For Google Chrome Browser we can control the settings and behaviour such as changing the home page url, disable the HomePage URL etc, so as users can’t make changes, and so many other policies which can be controlled directly through Group Policy. For this we need to import Google chrome ADMX templates into our Active directory environment which I will be going to show you in a moment on how to do this.

In an environment with Active Directory installed, there are no Group policies defined for Google Chrome. To explicitly control Google chrome we need to import Google Chrome ADMX Files and import it into SYSVOL’s PolicyDefinitions folder. Once imported, Chrome default settings can be centrally managed using Group Policy.

Download Google Chrome policy templates

Chrome ADMX templates are part of Google Chrome Bundle. One URL is opened, click on Manage policies. Following Policy templates are available to download:

  • Chrome ADM/ADMX templates
  • Chrome dev policy template
  • Chrome beta policy template
Chrome ADM/ADMX templates

Download the first option as this is the most stable templates.

The whole bundle (GoogleChromeEnterpriseBundle64) can also be downloaded by clicking on Windows, which gives a complete package including Google Chrome application installer, ADMX templates and documentation.

Chromw browser for Windows Channel download

Once downloaded in policy_templates.zip, extract the file and we can see 3 folders:

Chromeos
common
windows

We are interested in windows folder only. Open the windows\admx folder and we can see chrome.admx & google.admx including various language folders containing supported language file required for admx ie. Chrome.adml & google.adml.

chrome.admx

Import Google Chrome admx to Group Policy location

To control the chrome policies for domain joined systems, we will be copying admx & adml files under specific SYSVOL location which is accessible by all devices.

Login to Domain controller and navigate to \\<DomainName>\SYSVOL\<DomainName>\Policies\PolicyDefinitions

(If PolicyDefinitions folder does not exists, create the folder )

Copy chrome.admx under this folder ie. \\manban.com\SYSVOL\MANBAN.COM\Policies\PolicyDefinitions

Also copy chrome.adml under \\manban.com\SYSVOL\MANBAN.COM\Policies\PolicyDefinitions\en-US

chrome.adml

Import Google Chrome admx on Windows 10 / Windows 11 – Workgroup devices

For devices which are not joined to domain can also utilise the chrome policies. Copy downloaded files under:

Copy chrome.admx under C:\windows\PolicyDefinitions\chrome.admx
Copy chrome.adml under C:\windows\PolicyDefinitions\en-US\chrome.adml

c:\windows\policydefinitions\chrome.admx

That’s it, we are ready to deploy policy.

How to change Home page URL for Google Chrome using Group Policy

Login to the server and launch Group Policy Management (gpmc.msc). Create a new policy with the name Chrome and edit it to open Group Policy Management Editor.

Group Policy Management

Expand the policy, Computer Configuration > Policies > Administrative Templates > Google Chrome

We can see all policies are available. If adml file is not copied under language folder ie. \\manban.com\SYSVOL\MANBAN.COM\Policies\PolicyDefinitions\en-US, we will see the error

 “An appropriate resource file could not be found for file \\MANBAN.COM\SysVol\MANBAN.COM\Policies\PolicyDefinition\chrome.admx (error = 2): The system cannot find the file specified.
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Expand Administrative Templates > Google Chrome > Startup, Home page and New Tab page, we need to make following changes:

Use New Tab Page as homepage : Disabled
Configure the home page URL : https://www.bing.com
Show Home button on toolbar :  Enabled

Configure the home page URL

These settings are meant for only enabling Home button and launching a specific URL.

If you are looking for how to open specific URL while opening chrome browse, then you need to make following changes:

Action on startup : Open a list of URLs
URLs to open on startup : click on Show and specify the URL https://www.google.com

Action on startup
URLs to open on startup

Login to Windows 10 / Windows 11 workstation, open cmd prompt with admin rights and initiate Gpupdate /force. We can see Chrome as Applied Group Policy Objects.

Applied Group Policy Objects

Once Google Chrome browser is launched, I can see www.google.com launched as startup, Home button is visible now and when I click Home button www.bing.com was launched.

Chrome HomePage URL

Click on three dots and select Settings, navigate to Appearance. We can see Show home button is disabled and set to a specific URL and in disabled state.

Settings > Show Home button

Click On startup, we can see Open a specific page or set of pages also set and in disabled state.

On startup

Hence, we can see the Chrome policy is applying correctly, if we wanted to apply it locally on a specific system which is joined to workgroup then we can use Local Group Policy Editor (gpedit.msc) and we can make the same changes here as well.

Once the policy is applied, we can see the settings under Registry, open the Registry Editor and navigate to Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Google\Chrome along with sub key RestoreOnStartupURLs

We can see following registry keys:
HomepageIsNewTabPage
HomepageLocation
RestoreOnStartup
ShowHomeButton

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Important Links

Chrome Enterprise policy list and management | Documentation

https://enterprise.google.com/chrome/chrome-browser/#download