How to check whether chrome browser is installed or not using java script?

Question

My requirement is I need to check whether Chrome browser is insatlled on the client machine or not using Javascript. I have searched on the net not able to find the way out. Please help in getting this done.

Answer 1

You can't do that with JavaScript, and even if you could, you shouldn't.

JavaScript on the client doesn't have access to the user's system, for very good reasons. (Think, servers with bad intentions.)

Answer 2

You can check if the browser is Chrome with the next code

if(!window.chrome){
   //Chrome code
}else{
   // Chrome block
}

Answer 3

You can't. Not with JavaScript. However, you can check whether the browser that is currently being used to view your webpage is Google Chrome or not.

<script type="text/javascript">
if(window.chrome){
document.write("Browser is Chrome");
}
else{
document.write("Please download Chrome");
}
</script>

Answer 4

You can't get that kind of information directly from javascript.

What you can do is use that PowerShell command in a script and save the result in a file that you'll read later using javascript.

Get-ItemProperty HKLM:\Software\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\* | Select-Object DisplayName, DisplayVersion, InstallLocation, Publisher, InstallDate | Format-Table -AutoSize

This will get you all the installed programs on the machine from the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE registry folder.

The exact path to the folder from wich the informations are retrieved is : HKLM:\Software\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\

The given command will display you the application name followed by it's version, it's install location, publisher name and installation date in a PowerShell terminal.

If you want to output that list in a file simply add >FileName.txt after the command before pressing enter.

Note that by default the file will be created in the C:\Users\YourUserName\ folder so if you want the file to be created in a specific location you'll have to use the CD command to get to that specific location before executing the Get-Item-Property command.

This will get you done for the get installed programs on a machine part.

Now we can get into the check if app x is installed on the machine part.

First load the previously generated file in your js application you will use it's content to determine if an application is installed on the computer.

The faster way to get if 'chrome' is installed will be to load the file as a string and then do that basic stuff :

if (string.includes('chrome') == true) {
    // chrome is installed on the machine 
    // you can do some more stuff 
    // like extracting it's path from the file content

} else {
    console.log('error: chrome is not installed on this computer');
}

Needless to say that this will only work if used on the same computer from which you want to check the installed applications.

Edit: If you want a more practical file to use in javascript you can replace

Format-Table -AutoSize >FileName.txt

with :

Export-Csv -path .\FileName.txt -NoTypeInformation

this way you can split your file lines using the string.split(',') method and don't have to do some extra stuff to deal with the spaces between data.

Edit 2: Here's a full working implementation that will let you retrieve informations from a PowerShell script directly from your javascript using NodeJs.

get_programs.ps1 (PowerShell script file) :

chcp 65001 # sets the encoding for displaying chars correctly
Get-ItemProperty HKLM:\Software\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\* | Select-Object DisplayName, DisplayVersion, InstallLocation | ConvertTo-Csv -NoTypeInformation
chcp 850 # restores the default encoding set this will avoid police changes due to the terminal modifications

Notice the change at the end of the command which is now:
| ConvertTo-Csv -NoTypeInformation
this allows to log data in the PowerShell terminal in the csv format which will simplify it's parsing as a string.

If you don't want to use another file to hold those few PowerShell commands you can use this

child = spawn("powershell.exe",[`chcp 65001
Get-ItemProperty HKLM:\\Software\\Wow6432Node\\Microsoft\\Windows\\CurrentVersion\\Uninstall\\* | Select-Object DisplayName, DisplayVersion, InstallLocation | ConvertTo-Csv -NoTypeInformation
chcp 850`]);

as a replacement for

 child = spawn("powershell.exe",["./get_programs.ps1"]);

If you choose to do this don't forget to escape the \ chars else it will not work.

app.js :

var spawn = require("child_process").spawn,child;
child = spawn("powershell.exe",["./get_programs.ps1"]); // here we start our PowerShell script "./" means that it's in the same directory as the .js file

let chromeDetails;

child.stdout.on("data", (data) => { // data event
    // here we receive each outputed line in the PowerShell terminal as an Uint8Array

    if (data.includes('Chrome')) { // check for the 'Chrome' string in data 
        chromeDetails = data.toString(); // adds data converted as string
    }
});

child.stderr.on("data", (data) => { // logs errors
    console.log(`Powershell Errors: ${data}`);
});

child.on("exit", () => { // exit event
    console.log("Powershell Script finished");
    
    if (chromeDetails != undefined) {
        console.log(`> chrome has been detected on this computer
    available informations (appName, version, installPath):
    ${chromeDetails}`);
    
    } else
        console.log('> chrome has not been detected on this computer');
    
});

child.stdin.end(); // we end the child

Expected output :

Powershell Script finished
> chrome has been detected on this computer
    available informations (appName, version, installPath):
    "Google Chrome","103.0.5060.114","C:\Program Files\Google\Chrome\Application"

If you are not on Windows you may want to take a look at Spawning .bat and .cmd files on Windows from the NodeJs documentation to get hints on how to adapt the above app.js code to work on your system.