Setting Google Drive to open Google Docs files with Chrome

Question

By default, Google Drive opens Google Docs files with the default browser, which is Firefox in my case. Can I set Google Drive to open Google Docs files with Chrome?

Answer 1

The browser does'n open a file locally, so you cannot associate a filetype to a particular software. The files are managed and opened through google docs.

What you want to do is somethink loke this: the link to the file should be like someserver.com/myfile.xls and that file to open in ms office through the web toolbar. If you would have the necessary rights this should work, but in your case it is much more complicated and it would be verry hard to do this.

Maybe you should download google drive and try this instead of the web browser version

Answer 2

I know this is years later, but I found a solution here:

https://code.google.com/p/googledrivesync-chrome/

With Windows Explorer in directory of Google Drive, googledrivesync-chrome forces the use of Google Chrome on a double click of a Google Document.

If you have win7 and drive is in the Program Files (x86) directory instead of simply Program Files, on the issues page someone put the line to modify to get it to work.

Answer 3

This is not an option on the website or drive (Google Drive), but on your computer and OS. Your system has a table, which application to open for which linked file type. Since Google Drive tries to emulate a drive, it just hands over the file and lets the system decide which app to use.

That said, you might find a workaround: It might be that Google Drive registers certain "file types" in the list of file types. That way, you could define per file type, which application to use for that.

With Windows 7, you can see the file type associations at

Control Panel\Programs\Default Programs\Set Associations

Just search for "file types" in the search box of the control panel.

If this is not so – you could set up a feature request for Google Drive to do that, since it would enable people to "prefer Chrome over others", maybe they are willing to do so to enlarge their number of followers.

Answer 4

@mareoraft - Check this picture for your reference.

You can do by going into the Google chrome settings page by checking Settings -> Add additional accessibility features under the accessibility.Now it will open new tab and you need to search for open with google drive and then add the extension Open with Google Drive™ Viewer to your google chrome .Now download file would be open with google docs

Answer 5

"Easiest way to solve this issue, No Code, No Add-on"

You just change your default browser by

1. Click the Start button, and then type "Default apps".
2. In the search results, select Default apps.
3. Under Web browser, select the browser currently listed, and then select "Google Chrome"
4. Done.

Answer 6

This is in general a bad solution, however on the off chance someone finds this useful I'm posting it.

@echo OFF
rem This is a terrible idea

set CHROME_PATH=C:\Program Files (x86)\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe

set fn=%1
set fn=%fn:"=%

python -c "import json;import subprocess;subprocess.run([r'%CHROME_PATH%',json.load(open(r'%fn%'))['url']])"

Expanded python code is:

# not required
import json
import subprocess
url = json.load(open(r'%fn%'))['url']
subprocess.run([r'%CHROME_PATH%', url])

The code is a batch script which runs a short piece of Python code to extract the URL from the .gsheet, .gdoc, etc. files and opens the URL in chrome.

In order to install just copy the above code into a .bat file somewhere. Set your file handlers for the google drive files to the .bat file you created and change the CHROME_PATH to match your version of chrome.

Some alternatives:

• Hack the registry to run python files correctly as file extension handlers.
• Compile the python to a binary and have the .exe as the open handler.
• Have two files.
• Do all the parsing in batch. (not recommended)

Answer 7

Lots of great input here. The solution for Mac is very easy.

If you want google docs to open in a new tab in Chrome go to : Chrome > preferences and from the settings menu choose 'Default browser'

The Mac with then ask you if you really want to do this and hey why not just keep Safari as you default browser. Click on Chrome. Sorry Apple - its just not happening. Stay strong.

The main reason I want my google docs to load in Chrome is that I use Chrome for Gmail and just want the doc in a tab and not a new window. Plus I am having trouble when I cut and paste into a spreadsheet window from gmail and want it to be the same font and font size as the rest of the spreadsheet. Safari does not do this very well in conjunction with google docs.