When using a custom build, fork, or integration of Chromium, or if you're building ChromiumOS, you will need access to Google API for key functionality.
Googlers only:
How-to: First, acquire API keys. Then, specify the API keys to use either when you build Chromium, or at runtime using environment variables.
Make sure you are a member of chromium-dev@chromium.org (you can choose not to receive mail).
Make sure you are logged in with the Google account associated with the email address that you used to subscribe to chromium-dev.
optional You may add other members of your organization or team on the Team tab.
Open the APIs and Services > Library from the hamburger menu, search for all of the following APIs. For each of these APIs:
Enable API button at the topI have read and agree to the <API name> Terms of Service checkboxList of APIs (if any are not shown, recheck step 1 above):
Go to the Credentials sub tab under the API & Services section in the hamburger menu.
Click the Create credentials button then click on the OAuth client ID item in the drop-down list.
Configure consent screen button. Fill in the “product name” (anything you choose) and other details, then click on Save.Add credentials button again, then select “OAuth 2.0 client ID” from the drop-down list.Create.In the pop-up window that appears, you'll see a client ID and a Client secret string. Copy and paste those in a text file on your dev box then click OK to dismiss. A new item should now appear in the OAuth 2.0 client IDs list. You can click on the name of your client ID to retrieve the ID and secret at any time. In the next few sections, these values will be referred to as the Client ID and Client secret fields.
Click the Create credentials button again on the same page.
API key button.OK to dismiss.You should now have an API key and an OAuth 2.0 client ID in the Credentials tab. The next sections will refer to the value as the “API key”.
If you are building Chromium yourself, you can provide keys as part of your build configuration, that way they are always baked into your binary.
Specify three variables in your args.gn file (edit by running gn args out/your_out_dir_here)
google_api_key = "your_api_key" google_default_client_id = "your_client_id" google_default_client_secret = "your_client_secret"
If you prefer, you can build a Chromium binary (or use a pre-built Chromium binary) without API keys baked in, and instead provide them at runtime. To do so, set the environment variables GOOGLE_API_KEY, GOOGLE_DEFAULT_CLIENT_ID and GOOGLE_DEFAULT_CLIENT_SECRET to your “API key”, “Client ID” and “Client secret” values respectively.
On Chromium OS to specify the keys as environment variables append them to the end of /etc/chrome_dev.conf:
GOOGLE_API_KEY=your_api_key GOOGLE_DEFAULT_CLIENT_ID=your_client_id GOOGLE_DEFAULT_CLIENT_SECRET=your_client_secret
Signing in to Chromium requires an OAuth 2.0 token for authentication. As this OAuth 2.0 token gives access to various Google services that handle user data (e.g. Chrome sync), for security and privacy reasons the generation of this OAuth 2.0 token is restricted. This means that signing in to Chromium is restricted (as the OAuth 2.0 token cannot be generated). In order to sign in to Chromium builds, please add your test account to google-browser-signin-testaccounts@chromium.org (accounts in this group are allowed to get access tokens bypassing the restriction above).
google_default_client_id, google_default_client_secret from gn args and GOOGLE_DEFAULT_CLIENT_ID and GOOGLE_DEFAULT_CLIENT_SECRET from your environment settings).Many of the Google APIs used by Chrome are specific to Google and not intended for use in derived products. In the API Console you may be able to purchase additional quota for some of the APIs listed above. For APIs that do not have a “Pricing” link, additional quota is not available for purchase.
The default Chromium chrome.identity.getAuthToken API that extensions may call to obtain auth tokens will fail outside of Google Chrome as the implementation uses restricted APIs.
A prototype CL for Chromium embedders might use to replace the implementation with one not dependent upon private APIs can be found attached to this post.