You can now install an official Google Chrome build on Arm64 Linux devices, including the Raspberry Pi.
Back in March, Google promised Chrome for Arm64 Linux in “Q2 2026” so users on SBCs, AI desktops and the growing-fleet of Snapdragon laptops out there, could use the flagship browser and benefit from the handful of extras it offers over a vanilla Chromium build.
The search giant has said a whole lot about that effort since, but Arm64 builds of Chrome has recently been added to the browser’s official Linux repos for Debian and RPM-based Linux distributions – thanks Steven H.
However, when I went to the official Chrome download page on my Raspberry Pi 5 (running Ubuntu 26.04 LTS) it offered me an AMD64 installer. That isn’t going to work. But, a quick edit of the download URL to replace amd64 with arm64 did the trick: a native Arm64 version.
The Google Chrome Arm64 Deb package installed without issue via Apt on Ubuntu, netting me a aarch64 build of Google Chrome v150 on the stable channel.
As the Deb adds Google’s repo as part of the installation future updates will come through normally alongside other updates. I haven’t tested the RPM, so if you’re on Fedora and it all works fine there, let me know in the comments.
Chrome (arm64) works well on my Raspberry Pi 5
Chromium, the open-source version of Chrome, is already available on Arm64 devices, so too are scores of Chromium-based web browsers, including Vivaldi. Google Chrome proper showing up is, arguably, a bit of a non-event itself – at least to long-time Arm users.
What is more interesting is what comes along for the ride.
Chromium lacks Google account sync, so that’s here and worked in my testing. Signing in with my Google account pulled in my extensions, bookmarks, password and the rest. I’m out of the Chrome ecosystem these days, but for those still within, it’s nice to have that.
It also includes DRM playback via Widevine. Historically, running Widevine on Arm Linux outside of ChromeOS has relied on workarounds where the 64-bit aarch64 binary was extracted from a ChromeOS image, with third-party scripts needed to resolve integration quirks.
Here, Chrome’s chrome://media-internals page reports a Widevine module at /opt/google/chrome/WidevineCdm/_platform_specific/linux_arm64/. This suggests it’s a proper native aarch64 build, bundled inside.
However, it is still “Software Secure”, a software-based DRM that caps Netflix and other content on Linux at 720p or 1080p rather than offering 4K or HDR streams due to a lack of hardware-backed TEE chains. Annoying, but the reliability of playback will be better.
Hardware video decoding was inactive on my Pi 5 during testing, so chances are any higher-resolution DRM streams would likely overwhelm the CPU regardless.
In media in general, BBC iPlayer on its highest setting played smoothly on my Raspberry Pi 5 – a contrast to how stutters it is in Ubuntu’s Firefox Snap for Arm64.
4K YouTube delivered dropped frames and stutters aplenty, but the Pi hardware is likely the bottleneck rather than Chrome. However, 2K YouTube content was buttery smooth.
If you’ve got an Arm64 device – doesn’t have to be a single-board computer, could be a PineBook Pro or Snapdragon X laptop or System76 Thelio PC – and fancy testing this yourself, download it from the Chrome website directly: