Chromium Build For OS X

This post was written by Chris Latko on February 13, 2009
Posted Under: Google
Chromium on OS X

Chromium on OS X

Update: Chromium build 12558 is now available.

Since Mike Pinkerton published some screenshots of Chromium running on OS X, there seems to be a little uproar in the Mac community about when we will see the final version. I decided to investigate a tad and built my own version for OS X. My version, rev 9780, seems to do a bit better than Mike’s because clicking on links work. This seems far from complete though, so if you enjoy lots of unexpected quits, this app is for you.

There is another app that is built with Chromium, called TestShell. It is a version of Chrome with basically no interface - this is the version the Mac developers have been using to port the backend code over. TestShell is quite a bit more stable than Chromium, but you don’t get any of the features. What you are seeing on Pinkerton’s site are the first versions of the Mac look and feel being added.

Some interesting things I noticed in the Chromium source code (I didn’t spend too much time looking):

  • There is an iPhone directory with resources and nib files
  • The version of WebKit being used is almost in sync with the WebKit trunk
  • There is some Mozilla code in here, but not as much as I would have thought

Other findings:

  • The Google BuildBot waterfall page is amazing - work is being done on Chromium at a rapid clip.
  • There are OS X Chromium torrents popping up of build 9750. People are having tons of problems with it.

Ok, on to benchmarks:

Chromium Chart

The updated Chromium build whomps WebKit with a 691 millisecond score. The above benchmarks are for the older version of Chromium.

Go To Downloads Page

Because this project is being developed so rapidly, I will start doing nightlies. Give me a few days to set that up.

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I, as a Mac user won’t be using this pile of garbage. There are plenty of other better browsers out there. Why would I use a browser that was ported from the darkside?(WINSUX)

#1 
Written By AdventTech67 on February 14th, 2009 @ 4:27 pm

Bring on the ignorance… Chromium/Chrome is built on WebKit/WebCore, i.e. Safari! WebKit is a fantastic rendering engine, and Safari is a great browser, and having the resources of Google working on it means both will get better, quicker… it’s a win-win.

#2 
Written By Marc on February 14th, 2009 @ 8:27 pm

WTF? This thing is crazy. The first non wine version of Google Chrome and when I type a web address in it comes up with a new tab this is not ready to be used even from a testing standpoint this feels worse than a Alpha!

#3 
Written By Thomas on February 15th, 2009 @ 10:44 pm

As someone else commented, this build doesn’t work at all. It won’t load a page at all. It just opens a new empty tab when you type in an address and press enter.

#4 
Written By Lucas on February 16th, 2009 @ 5:37 pm

It will work. When that new tab pops up, wait and your page will load. I was able to run the SunSpider tests using this build. Now, the revision number is up to 9859, and a bit of work was done on the Mac side of things. I’ll post a newer build and get the nightlies up shortly.

#5 
Written By Chris Latko on February 16th, 2009 @ 7:13 pm

Can’t get the Chromium build to load a page, but the Testshell works fine.

#6 
Written By Peter S. on February 17th, 2009 @ 5:05 am

WHAT a Shame
A Company like Google that make Billions of Dollars a Year and so many GOOD Coders have not the Glue to make
a simple Browser that Works like Safari oder Camino

without a long Alpha and Beta Test

I just Wonder

Ich love Google don t missunderstand
There a a lot of good free products !!!

#7 
Written By Guido Alexander Waldenmeier on February 17th, 2009 @ 7:26 am

actually here it did not work at all, too. just more tabs popping up when trying to use a webadress… anyway chrome is just an information collecting device of google, isnt it ? :P

#8 
Written By hans muster on February 17th, 2009 @ 8:29 am

Doesn’t work on default, “http://dev.chromium.org/” (opens new tab), but seems OK on other pages I tested.

#9 
Written By Warren on February 17th, 2009 @ 10:12 am

I get zero response from Chromium and I get this in the console:
2/17/09 Feb 17,10:51:15 PM [0x0-0x2c92c9].com.google.Chromium[6172] [6172:523:183378159034641:ERROR:/Users/beetle/src/chromium/src/chrome/browser/cocoa/tab_contents_controller.mm(58)] Not implemented reached in virtual void LocationBarBridge::AcceptInput()

#10 
Written By Scott Ricketts on February 17th, 2009 @ 10:39 pm

Only for Intel??? What about ppc users…google wants me to destroy my g4

#11 
Written By Raul Monsalves on February 20th, 2009 @ 5:37 pm

Apparently. There is no way to build for ppc..

#12 
Written By Chris Latko on February 21st, 2009 @ 12:34 am

Chromium's good but why now download the mac version directly : http://www.google.com/chrome/intl/en/eula_dev.htm...

Cheers!

#13 
Written By unlimited on September 13th, 2009 @ 3:27 am

The Chromium builds are often far ahead of the official Chrom releases. They are basically the dev channel for the Mac.

#14 
Written By Chris Latko on September 13th, 2009 @ 4:26 am

The Chromium builds are often far ahead of the official Chrome releases. They are basically the dev channel for the Mac.

#15 
Written By Chris Latko on September 13th, 2009 @ 4:26 am

@fedesoria chromium for osx (preprealpha) http://bit.ly/C5sHq

This comment was originally posted on Twitter

#16 
Written By sd on May 6th, 2009 @ 2:11 pm

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