Need a way for Thorium to "pretend" to be a real Chrome

[Tvangeste]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe. There are some sites and extensions that insist on being used ONLY with "real" Chrome, and if they detect that a fork of Chrome is used, they refuse to work. I am aware of various Capcha libs doing this, as well as some extensions (1Password, 2FAS).

Essentially, this renders Thorium as less comfortable browser solution that is not properly working in some scenarios.

Describe the solution you'd like, including relevant patches or source A command-line switch to enable Chrome-pretend mode would be enough, I guess.

Additional Info As far as I know, the extensions and libraries use navigator.userAgentData.brands API to detect if the real Chrome is used or not.

The real chrome provides:

[
    {
        "brand": "Chromium",
        "version": "118"
    },
    {
        "brand": "Google Chrome",
        "version": "118"
    },
    {
        "brand": "Not=A?Brand",
        "version": "99"
    }
]

While the Thorium responds with:

[
    {
        "brand": "Chromium",
        "version": "117"
    },
    {
        "brand": "Not;A=Brand",
        "version": "8"
    }
]

[gz83]

Yes, if there is a way to disguise it, it will solve a lot of problems

[GrimPixel]

There is a user agent switcher to use: https://add0n.com/useragent-switcher.html.

[Tvangeste]

@GrimPixel Thanks for the suggestion, but this won't work when you need to spoof the user agent for other extensions, unfortunately. I double-checked, just in case, and 1Password extension still sees the original navigator.userAgentData.

But your suggestion is useful when we spoofing the agent on actual web sites, not extensions.

[domeniczz]

That should be a great feature!

On thorium, my 1password extension just frequently ask me to re-login or enter password, so damn annoying. But on Chrome, the extension is totally depends on 1password desktop app, won't always ask for re-login.

[Tvangeste]

@domeniczz , exactly my problem that forced me to file this issue: 1Password extension doesn't connect to the 1Password desktop app, since it insists for the browser to be the "official" one.

[davidsielert]

@Tvangeste 1Password has a configuration file that you can change to allow it to work. https://1password.community/discussion/120954/how-the-browser-integration-works

[domeniczz]

@davidsielert The discussion is for Linux, I explore a little but fail to find out how to do the same thing in Windows. Do you have any advice? Thanks.

[davidsielert]

@domeniczz I believe the other platforms you need to use the beta build which is supposed to have a new area in setting to manage allowed browsers as 1Password no longer wishes to vet chrome forks.

https://1password.community/discussion/140735/extending-support-for-trusted-web-browsers

[ffranke]

@davidsielert that does only seem to work when the App is signed, though… See https://github.com/Alex313031/Thorium-MacOS/issues/27

[Tvangeste]

So, this issue with Thorium and 1Password is basically killing my use of Thorium, on multiple platforms (Windows and Linux).

I understand that this is not strictly Thorium problem per se, but still, one important use case is not functional with Thorium for me :(

[lavavex]

The user agent change is net even fixing logging into sites like Twitch. Something other than user agent is being used to deny thorium access to some sites.

[NicolasGB]

Hi! so I wanted to use 1password in thorium but i cannot make it work.

https://1password.community/discussion/120954/how-the-browser-integration-works I followed this as it has been suggested in the comments of this issue but 1password doesn't seem to recognize thorium either.

I added "thorium-browser" to the list which is the name of the bin but nothing, maybe someone managed to make it work and could give me a tip?

Otherwise hope this issue gets resolved, the work on thorium is excellent but not being able to easily use my password manager is kind of a deal breaker for me :(

Will use it as soon as it is fixed though :smile:

[i1u5]

+1 on this, it would also potentially close #58 #538

I think maybe adding a flag or just a launch parameter/env var would help a lot without affecting anything else, it should not be a requirement to use a user agent switcher extension and even if that were to be the solution, it still does not help with other extensions themselves.

[megalithic]

Bumping this for visiblity and consideration, as I believe many are affected.

[cccarv82]

this is also an issue for Kaspersky password manager extension I'm not using thorium just because of this...

[megalithic]

Any news on this @Alex313031?