I installed Chrome over the weekend.  It seems ok enough although a bit slow.  However, I found that I had to remember to use it.  So I decided to really commit to it and set it as my default browser, through jailbreak of course.  First off its not fast despite what they say. In fact, its a bit slower. The reason is Apple. You are not allowed to use any other web engine then the webKit that comes with the iOS API.  That means almost no web experience will be much faster then what Safari already supplies.  Weak. Still there are some nice things.  The biggest reason to use it is synced tabs with your other Chrome pages.  “Incognito” mode is nice if you need that sort of thing. The thumb pages are good although we had that with Opera forever.  Really I cannot find that much to make me keep Chrome longer then the week I plan to test it with short of the tab syning. Have to see just how valuable that is.  Then again, Firefox is my main browser, so I’m sure that colours my view.  But anyway, to setting up a default browser..

There are two ways to change your default browser in iOS, the first one uses jailbreak… of course.  There are a few tools already that do this, but I just tried one that popped up on the great iphone jailbreak feed and used that.  Go to Cydia  and then tap Manage > Sources > Edit > Add, and type rpetri.ch/repo.  Once installed you can go to settings and select the browser you want.

Now if you do not have jailbreak, never fear, there is a way you can kinda do it.  Its kinda of a pain, but if you are really into Chrome, it may be worth it to you. A jailbreaker named Jon Abrams has published some JavaScript code that will allow any webpage to be opened in Chrome.  You are not exactly opening first hand in Chrome, but if you have a few pages you like to save on your desktop, then this will work.

Following is the step-by-step guide through which you can make this happen :-

Step 1: Copy this Javascript code to clipboard : javascript:location.href=”googlechrome”+location.href.substring(4);

Step 2: Open up Mobile Safari on your iOS device, navigate to any webpage, save it as a bookmark and give it the name ‘Open Chrome‘.

Step 3: Now select that saved bookmark and tap ‘Edit‘ option. Edit the saved bookmark by deleting the URL string from within it and paste in the copied JavaScript code string from step 1 and then save it.

Now whenever you want to open a link on Chrome, first Safari would open that link and upon it opening, select the option  bookmark and tap “Open Chrome” which would pass the current webpage to Chrome.