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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-06-17T20:11:55+00:00

I’ve got a website that we are requiring to use Adobe Reader’s plugin, and

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I’ve got a website that we are requiring to use Adobe Reader’s plugin, and as a result we are running into trouble with the generic PDF plugin built into Chrome

(NOTE: Please don’t answer this question with ‘if you have a problem with the generic PDF plugin, please file a bug with Chrome so we can get this fixed’…we have specific reasons for requiring the Adobe plugin…this isn’t a question on that topic)

As a result I’ve built a script that checks if the generic plugin is the currently active plugin (based on the ‘navigator.mimeTypes[“application/pdf”].enabledPlugin.name’) and this works wonderfully for telling our clients that they do not have the right plugin enabled. From there we prompt them with step by step instructions on enabling the correct plugin.

That being said, it would be ideal if we could tell them to click a link to launch the plugin management page, rather than telling them to enter ‘chrome://plugins’ into their web browser

I’ve tried setting ‘chrome://plugins/’ and ‘about:plugins’ as the href location of an anchor tag but clicking it does nothing (which I assume is by design)…I also tried using window.open(‘chrome://plugins’) and ‘about:plugins’ and this did not work either…is it possible to launch this page from javascript?

If this is not an option, can we write a chrome extension that automatically switches the active plugin for our clients?

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    If a URI is not followed on a user click (which is a user initiated action) on an anchor element, then the given URI cannot be opened through automated means1.

    Chrome is treating it as a “restricted protocol” like file:// and will not honor any navigation (e.g. user click, drag-n-drop, simulated click, window.open, location.href, etc) except for being entered manually into the location bar.

    1 This assumes that there is no additional Plugin/Extension to facilitate this operation (i.e. LocalLinks) and that the operation is initiated from the “untrusted” Page/Document.

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