Netflix Watch Instantly should work fine in Google Chrome. After all, it is using the same rendering engine as Safari, so it should just work, right?
The answer is not that simple...
Google Chrome for the Mac is 100% capable of running Netflix Watch Instantly, but the web-geeks at Netflix are bad programmers.
The Netflix geeks did a very bad job of detecting Watch Instantly capable browsers. They are looking for the word SAFARI instead of looking for the word WEBKIT as an identifier in the browser's user-agent. Because of this, Chrome users get an apology instead of streaming movies.
Tsk, tsk, tsk... sloppy programming Netflix!
Here's the work around:
First, the easy way:
Download ChromeFlix which launches your currently installed version of Chrome but makes it pretend to be Apple's Safari.
Leopard Users (OSX 10.5.x) click here.
And here's the geeky way:
In terminal issue the following command:
open /Applications/Google\ Chrome.app --args -user-agent="Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10_5_3; en-us) AppleWebKit/525.1 9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.2.1 Safari/525.19"
Or, the uber-geeky way:
Open terminal, edit .profile, and make an alias to the geeky command above.
Until Netflix decides to hire competent web-geeks, the choices above are your only solutions.
Comments
[...] See the original post
Submitted by ChromeFlix &... (not verified) on
[...] See the original post here: ChromeFlix and#8211; or Netflix Watch Instantly for Google Chrome on the and#8230; [...]
Fantastic for Mac users! I'm
Submitted by zoso (not verified) on
Fantastic for Mac users! I'm guessing there's not much of a chance for a Linux Chromeflix? Is that even possible?
For linux, the problem is
Submitted by Steven on
For linux, the problem is that Moonlight implements Silverlight WITHOUT the DRM that made Netflix choose it in the first place. And, without DRM support, it can't play the videos.
So, the only way to use Watch Instantly on linux is to run VirtualBox and run a whole Windows instance.
Wish I could help,
Steven
THANK YOU so much for this.
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on
THANK YOU so much for this. Google needs to thank you also, because literally the only reason I didn't switch from firefox was that I couldn't play netflix instant videos on Chrome. Now with Chromeflix, I've totally made the switch to Chrome, deleted firefox off of my mac.
Is this only for Snow Leopard
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on
Is this only for Snow Leopard? I can't get it to work on Leopard.
Though I have only tested on
Submitted by Steven on
Though I have only tested on 10.6, this should work on any OS capable of running Chrome (dev or beta). The app, ChromeFlix, is simply a wrapper around the command also mentioned here in the article. Quit Chrome. Start a Terminal. Enter the command and test it that way.
You forgot the final quote
Submitted by Joe H (not verified) on
You forgot the final quote mark the whole command should be:
open /Applications/Google\ Chrome.app --args -user-agent="Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10_5_3; en-us) AppleWebKit/525.1 9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.2.1 Safari/525.19"
All the best!
Joe
Good catch! Updating the
Submitted by Steven on
Good catch! Updating the posting now. Thanks Joe.
Thanks this si working out
Submitted by Hungrysquirrel (not verified) on
Thanks this si working out great for me! Now only if Firebug could be fully ported over to Chrome I would only need one browser!
Now if only chrome ran video
Submitted by Dave (not verified) on
Now if only chrome ran video well on macs - streaming netflix on my computer via chrome causes it to heat up twice as fast and get twice as hot as it does with safari. An chance you can put pressure on google to be a little less lazy like you did with netflix?
For Leopard (10.5.X) (not
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on
For Leopard (10.5.X) (not Snow Leopard) use this:
/Applications/Google\ Chrome.app/Contents/MacOS/Google\ Chrome –args -user-agent="Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10_5_8; en-us) AppleWebKit/525.19 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.2.1 Safari/525/19"
via: http://moi.cirne.com/index.php/2009/12/19/setting-user-agent-for-mac-chr...
Good catch! And thanks for
Submitted by Steven on
Good catch! And thanks for posting that here. If people want, I can package up that Leopard version in an App Wrapper too.
please do!
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on
please do!
I am no expert on the alias
Submitted by JmS (not verified) on
I am no expert on the alias command, and I'm a little confused. Since it is typically enclosed in quotation marks, and there already are quotations within the command, could you please spell out how the shortcut should look like in .profile or .cshrc? Thanks!
http://code.google.com/p
Submitted by Steven on
http://code.google.com/p/stevenjaycohen/downloads/detail?name=ChromeFlix...
There is the download for Leopard (OSX 10.5.x)
Enclose it in single quotes.
Submitted by Steven on
Enclose it in single quotes. This is how it looks in my .profile:
alias netflix='open /Applications/Google\ Chrome.app --args -user-agent="Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10_5_3; en-us) AppleWebKit/525.19 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.2.1 Safari/525.19"'
Hungrysquirrel, have you
Submitted by Dawson (not verified) on
Hungrysquirrel, have you tried Firebug Lite? (http://getfirebug.com/firebuglite) It's not quite as nice as Firebug on Firefox, but it provides much of the same functionality.
I am new to Mac's and love
Submitted by Lee (not verified) on
I am new to Mac's and love them. When I mean new I mean NEW! My question is: could making chrome appear to be safari could be bad in some cases? I dont want chrome with a identity complex do I?
Thank you for helping me understand.
Lee
No, it won't cause a problem,
Submitted by Steven on
No, it won't cause a problem, Chrome and Safari use the same rendering engine. And, since you will only start Chrome with ChromeFlix when you want to watch netflix, it won't affect you the rest of the time.
How can I undo the command?
Submitted by yule (not verified) on
How can I undo the command?
Yule, you do not need to
Submitted by Steven on
Yule, you do not need to *undo* anything. The command makes no modifications to your system. Just start up Chrome normally and the flags discussed in this post are NOT invoked.
Hi Steve, I think there's a
Submitted by Malcolm (not verified) on
Hi Steve, I think there's a mistake in the leopard package. It wasn't working for me, but once I went into the script file (Contents>Resources>script) and removed the "open" at the beginning of the script it started working fine. (I'm running 10.5.8).
Thanks for putting this together.
I would need confirmation on
Submitted by Steven on
I would need confirmation on this from another 10.5.x user since it seems to work as is for previous downloaders.
Thanks for the info though!
Malcolm is correct. I'm using
Submitted by BlueWeaselBreath (not verified) on
Malcolm is correct. I'm using 10.5.8, and as I don't normally use Macs (this is a roommate's computer) I was stumped on how to fix the problem. When I first downloaded the file, it opened for a microsecond then closed again without ever launching the Chrome window. When I removed the "open" from the script file, it worked as intended.
Thanks for this!
Another 10.5.8 user here, and
Submitted by Jonathan (not verified) on
Another 10.5.8 user here, and I had the same results as Malcolm. ChromeFlix would open, but it wouldn't cause Chrome to start up. Removing 'open' from the script file resolved the issue, and I'm watching Netflix problem-free now :)
Hi Steve:
Submitted by R. Kevin Hill (not verified) on
Hi Steve:
I can confirm that (1) your non-Snow, Leopard version has the "open" command in the script, (2) it does not work as advertised on 10.5.8, (2) that if you delete the "open" command it works like a charm. Thanks for your work, but you might want to delete that "open" command.
K
Thanks for the reports! I've
Submitted by Steven on
Thanks for the reports! I've updated the 10.5.x download.
The download has been updated
Submitted by Steven on
The download has been updated. Thanks for the bug reports.
Just wanted to thank you for
Submitted by dougefresh91 (not verified) on
Just wanted to thank you for this. I've been using Chrome for a few months now, and whenever I want to watch instant watch I have to open Firefox. I saw this fix floating around, but never knew how to implement it on the Mac. Worked great once I realized that I had to move Chrome to my app folder.
[...] can copy and paste into
Submitted by How to enable N... (not verified) on
[...] can copy and paste into the Terminal. If mucking about with that makes you queasy, you can download Chromeflix (one version for Mac OS X v10.5, one for v10.6) which, after a simple double-click, does the same [...]
[...] can copy and paste into
Submitted by How to enable N... (not verified) on
[...] can copy and paste into the Terminal. If mucking about with that makes you queasy, you can download Chromeflix (one version for Mac OS X v10.5, one for v10.6) which, after a simple double-click, does the same [...]
[...] can copy and paste into
Submitted by How to enable N... (not verified) on
[...] can copy and paste into the Terminal. If mucking about with that makes you queasy, you can download Chromeflix (one version for Mac OS X v10.5, one for v10.6) which, after a simple double-click, does the same [...]
[...] can copy and paste into
Submitted by Apple Rumors &a... (not verified) on
[...] can copy and paste into the Terminal. If mucking about with that makes you queasy, you can download Chromeflix (one version for Mac OS X v10.5, one for v10.6) which, after a simple double-click, does the same [...]
[...] can copy and paste into
Submitted by How to enable N... (not verified) on
[...] can copy and paste into the Terminal. If mucking about with that makes you queasy, you can download Chromeflix (one version for Mac OS X v10.5, one for v10.6) which, after a simple double-click, does the same [...]
[...] can copy and paste into
Submitted by How to enable ... (not verified) on
[...] can copy and paste into the Terminal. If mucking about with that makes you queasy, you can download Chromeflix (one version for Mac OS X v10.5, one for v10.6) which, after a simple double-click, does the same [...]
FYI, Netflix recently enabled
Submitted by Stuart Morgan (not verified) on
FYI, Netflix recently enabled support for streaming to Chrome for Mac, so the user-agent workaround is no longer necessary.
The big question now, though,
Submitted by Tad (not verified) on
The big question now, though, is now that there is Netflix for iPhone and iPad, what codec are they using? Probably not Silverlight, though for sure there is some manner of DRM happening.
There has got to be an avenue to do this, somehow and in some way.
Well, you could compile a
Submitted by Steven on
Well, you could compile a WebKit browser for linux that identifies itself as iOS. You would have to add some player that can play QuickTime content (VLC maybe?) and then wrap all of this up as a single app. Essentially, you would have to reverse engineer the entire iOS app.
If you are serious about trying this, I would recommend building it as a KDE application since KHTML is the original source of WebKit and I can see how one might use KDE bindings to simulate the calls you would need. Good luck!
[...] Link: ChromeFlix [...]
Submitted by ChromeFlix | T... (not verified) on
[...] Link: ChromeFlix [...]
Thanks again for doing this.
Submitted by R. Kevin Hill (not verified) on
Thanks again for doing this. I recently noticed that in the most recent builds of Chrome and Chromium that the programmers seem to have built a spoof in to get around Netflix's sniffing, so ChromeFlix is no longer necessary. However, it was a very nice workaround for awhile there, and very much appreciated!
Actually, NetFlix made the
Submitted by Steven on
Actually, NetFlix made the change.
Pages like this one shamed them into realizing that they should not selectively enable browsers.
Once Hulu learns the same lesson, Google TV and Boxee will be happy.
Home run man! Keep up the
Submitted by Mike (not verified) on
Home run man! Keep up the good work!
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