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command-linechromiumargs

Launch Chromium with command line switches has no effect

I'm running Chromium 85 on macOS 10.15.3.

I'm trying to use some of the various command line switches that Chromium makes available and none of them seem to have any effect. For example

./Chromium --ignore-gpu-blacklist

When it launches and I go to the chrome://flags page, the setting has not been enabled:

enter image description here

I've tried this on multiple versions of Chromium as well as on Windows with the same results. I can't seem to enable any of them.

I did notice on this page that it says

Note that if you look at chrome://flags to see if the command line option is active, the state might not be accurately reflected. Check chrome://version for the complete command line used in the current instance.

So maybe it is working and there's just no way to verify that? Checking the chrome://version page is not really sufficient to tell if a feature was successfully enabled. It's just echoing back what you passed into the command line.

Solution

  • As you noted, chrome://flags does not reflect the actual state. It only shows the flags that were enabled via that page. If you supply additional flags the page does not show them enabled, but they can still have an effect.

    Try with

    ./Chromium --show-overdraw-feedback

    and check the flags page. It will not show as enabled, but you can clearly see all the overlays everywhere.

    So you can assume your original

    ./Chromium --ignore-gpu-blacklist

    was likely correct and works.