Installing 1Password Extension in a Google Chrome Site Specific Browser (SSB)

A few of months ago I abandoned Fluid App for a shell script that generates Google Chrome site-specific browsers (SSBs). It has been amazing. I use a Chrome SSB for two Gmail accounts, Google Calendar, Remember the Milk, and TweetDeck.

There is a few quirks to be aware of however.

Ideally when you click an external link in an SSB it would open in your default browser. For example, if you were reading an email in your Gmail SSB and clicked http://nytimes.com it would open in your default browser (i.e. Firefox, Safari, Chrome, Opera, whatever). Unfortunately this is a known issue in Chrome and has yet to be addressed. At the moment, if you clicked that http://nytimes.com link in your Gmail SSB, it would just open a new Chrome window within the Gmail SSB. This was really annoying at first because I had to login to all my online accounts (Facebook, Twitter, etc) in all my SSBs, but once I realized that I could install 1Password in each SSB, the problem wasn’t so bad.

You can download and install the Chrome Extension for 1Password by going to the “Browsers” tab in 1Password’s Preferences.

Unfortunately, this only installs 1Password in your default Chrome browser, not in any of your SSBs.

To install the 1Password Chrome Extension in one of your SSBs:

  1. Open the SSB
  2. Press CMD-t to open a new window
  3. Enter http://aws.cachefly.net/aws/dmg/1PW3/English/OnePasswordChrome.crx in the address bar and hit enter
  4. The Chrome Extension should download and ask if you want to install
  5. Choose “Yes”
  6. A small key icon should appear in the top right corner of your Chrome window