How do some special programs enforce policy-like settings upon Chrome?

There's this parental control app called Qustodio. Upon installation, it manages to enforce a setting upon Chrome, namely that Safesearch is permanently enabled.

How does it manage to do this? And how can I apply similar rules/restrictions to my browser?

2 Answers

Install and configure Chrome policy templates

For Windows, there are two types of policy templates: an ADM and an ADMX template. Verify which type you can use on your network. The templates show which registry keys you can set to configure Chrome, and what the acceptable values are. Chrome looks at the values set in these registry keys to determine how to act.

Step1: Download Chrome policy templates

Download Google Chrome Bundle

Open the bundle.

Find the policy templates in the Configuration folder and the documentation in the Documentation folder.

You can also download the templates separately and view common policy documentation for all operating systems here: Zip file of Google Chrome templates and documentation.

Step 2: Open the ADM or ADMX template you downloaded Navigate to Start > Run: gpedit.msc. (Or run gpedit.msc in your terminal) Navigate to Local Computer Policy > Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates. Right-click Administrative Templates, and select Add/Remove Templates. Add the chrome.adm template via the dialog. Once complete, a Google / Google Chrome folder will appear under Administrative Templates if it's not already there. If you added the ADM template on Windows 7 or 10, it will appear under Classic Administrative Templates / Google / Google Chrome.

Step 3: Configure policies In the Group Policy Editor, open the template you just added and change the configuration settings. The most commonly-modified policies are:

Set the home page - The URL that Chrome opens when a user launches the browser or clicks the Home button. Send anonymous usage statistics and crash information - To turn off sending any crash information or anonymous statistics to Google, change this setting to be False. Turn off auto-updates - Although not normally recommended, you can turn off auto-updates. Apply the policies to the target machines. Depending on your network's configuration, this may require time for the policy to propagate, or you may need to propagate those policies manually via administrator tools.

References:

Set Chrome Browser policies on managed PCs

Google Chrome can be managed through Group Policy. I'm fairly sure that Qustodio just sets the registry keys that Group Policy would normally set too.