How can I find out what version of chrome I am using?
I would like a command line method, not the GUI - visiting chrome://chrome in the url bar. I need to be able to use it in a bash script.
I ran the command google-chrome --help, but it didn't seem to have a --version option.
5 Answers
It does have the option listed:
OPTIONS Google Chrome has hundreds of undocumented command-line flags that are added and removed at the whim of the developers. Here, we document relatively stable flags. ... --version Show version information. So you can use the command google-chrome with the --version option:
google-chrome --version gives:
Google Chrome 36.0.1985.125 For the following commands, I am using grep and regex, because it is much more adaptable to changes in Google Chrome version format changes
To get just the version number run the following command:
google-chrome --version | grep -iE "[0-9.]{10,20}" It gives:
36.0.1985.125 And this one:
google-chrome --version | grep -iE " [0-9]{1,3}.[0-9]{1,3} gives you just the main version numbers.
36.0 If you have beta installed:
Running this command:
google-chrome-beta --version gives:
Google Chrome 37.0.2062.58 beta And then there are the gui methods:
You can go to the following sites:
chrome://chrome gives you this:

And
chrome://version or
about: Thanks Jeff Inventor Chrome OS.
gives this:

Google Chrome 36.0.1985.125 (Official Build 283153) OS Linux Blink 537.36 (@177902) JavaScript V8 3.26.31.8 Flash 14.0.0.145 User Agent Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/36.0.1985.125 Safari/537.36 Command Line /opt/google/chrome/google-chrome --no-startup-window --flag-switches-begin --flag-switches-end Executable Path /opt/google/chrome/google-chrome Profile Path /home/tim/.config/google-chrome/Default Variations e950616e-37fb3cc2 c70841c8-4866ef6e 3664a344-be9e69ba 9e5c75f1-ad69ceb0 24dca50e-837c4893 ca65a9fe-91ac3782 8d790604-9cb2a91c 4ea303a6-3d47f4f4 d8f57532-f23d1dea b2612322-f8cf70e2 5a3c10b5-e1cc0f14 244ca1ac-4ad60575 5e29d81-f23d1dea 3ac60855-486e2a9c 246fb659-bca011b3 f296190c-cdc3d902 4442aae2-4ad60575 ed1d377-e1cc0f14 75f0f0a0-4ad60575 e2b18481-a5822863 e7e71889-e1cc0f14 cbf0c14e-bf3e6cfd My pronouns are He / Him
0Below command will give the version details only:
google-chrome --product-version Output:
78.0.3904.70 1For a more generic solution you can use apt-cache policy, e.g.:
$ apt-cache policy google-chrome-stable google-chrome-stable: Installed: 36.0.1985.125-1 Candidate: 36.0.1985.125-1 This will work with all software installed through your package manager.
2echo $(google-chrome --version | awk '{print $3}') output:
78.0.3904.97 about: also works. It gives the full version info of the browser, Blink, Javascript, and Flash.
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