I found a Lacros replacement to keep Chrome account switching

I have been using the LaCrOs version of Chrome for more than a year, and I was devastated when I read Robby’s post about Google shutting down the LaCrOs experiment in the near future. “Devastated” might seem like a bit of an overstatement, but let me explain.

Don’t take away my profiles!

The most valuable feature of LaCrOs was the ability to create multiple Chrome profiles. To those of you who use a Mac or PC as your primary device, this doesn’t seem like a big deal; but Chromebook users have never had access to this feature.

I serve as the Google Administrator for more than a dozen schools across the country. Every day I need to access 3-6 different Google domains to adjust their Google Admin policies. Logging in/out of these accounts on my Chromebook is not a sustainable solution.

Yes, there is the option of “fast account switching,” (which is anything but fast), or the ability to use multi-account browser sign-in, but this doesn’t support bookmarks or extension profiles. The truth is, there has never been a great multi-account option for Chromebook users until LaCrOs was introduced.

For the past year I have absolutely loved the simplicity of moving between a dozen Google Accounts, updating bookmarks, verifying extension policies, and installing add-ons for the schools that I serve. Reading that LaCrOs was being canceled put me into a bit of a panic and I had to find a solution; switching to a Mac or PC isn’t an option for me. I literally wrote the book on using Chromebooks in schools, so can you imagine me rolling in with a new Macbook?

I completely agree that Google should bring native Chrome profiles to ChromeOS. There are a lot of people like me who also have to manage multiple Google accounts and moving away from Chrome because of this missing feature.

I shared my dilemma to a Google Admin group which includes a former IT admin and developer who now works at Google: “Why not just install the Linux version of Chrome on your Chromebook?” Could my solution really be that simple?

How to enable Linux on your Chromebook

Now I’m a pretty techie guy, but I haven’t really gotten into Linux on ChromeOS, so this was a bit of a stretch for me. But desperate times call for desperate measures.

The first step was to enable Linux on my Chromebook. This is super easy to do:

1. Open the settings app on your Chromebook
2. On the left navigation, click on “Advanced” and then “developer”
3. Set the “Linux development environment” to ON.
4. Follow the on-screen prompts and wait for the setup process to finish (10-15 minutes)

Note: my personal Chromebook is NOT managed. Your ability to enable Linux on a device managed by your school or business will depend on the policies set by your IT department. 

Time to install the Linux Chrome browser

Linux is a command-line environment, so I was a little nervous about having to figure out how to install the Chrome browser and get everything set up. In fact, it was super easy and I didn’t have to type in a single command!

To install the Linux version of Chrome I went to the Chrome download page, searched around for the Linux link and downloaded the Debian version of the Chrome browser. Once the installation file was downloaded (ends in .deb), I found it in the files app, opened it up and let it install. No command line codes or anything. It just worked!

I now have the Linux version of Chrome on my Chromebook with access to profiles, and it’s just like using the LaCrOs browser! It will take a few weeks to fully test out my regular workflow to see if the Linux browser can perform as reliably as the native browser, but for now, the panic of losing access to LaCrOs has subsided.