If you visit the chrome://extensions/ screen in your Google Chrome web browser, you may find that some extensions cannot be disabled because the “Enabled” option is grayed out and cannot be unchecked. This is usually coupled with a message on the extension that says “This extension is managed and cannot be removed or disabled”.
These extensions are normally installed with other applications or can be part of adware. Though you can’t remove these extensions by unchecking the “Disabled” box, you can do it another way.
Sometimes you can simply remove the application from “Control Panel” > “Programs” > “Programs and Features“. If that doesn’t work for you, follow these steps.
- Type “chrome://extensions/” in the address bar, then press “Enter“.
- Check the “Developer mode” check box.
- Note the ID of the extension you wish to remove, located on the “Extensions” screen, then close Google Chrome.
- Open Windows Explorer and select the “Show hidden files, folders and drives” by selecting “Organize” > “Folder and search options” > “View“.
- Navigate to :
- Windows – C:\Users\your username\Appdata\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default\Extensions
- MacOS – ~/Library/Application Support/Google/Chrome/Default
- Linux – ~/.config/google-chrome/Default
- ChromeOS – /home/chronos/
- Delete the folder that matches the ID on the Chrome Extensions screen.
Now open Google Chrome again. The extension should be completely removed.
John Gentleman says
Oh, if it were that easy!!
This is a once off fix. When you reboot your system and reopen Chrome the dammed extensions reappear. In addition to your suggestion, there’s also a registry key with the same value/id which can be deleted via Regedit but sadly, this doesn’t provide a permanent fix either.
There’s ‘something’, ‘somewhere’ which instructs these annoying extensions to re-load.