Chrome on Ubuntu no longer supports Netflix? Latest update removed Widevine component

Netflix was working fine until an upgrade updated Chrome to version 48.0.2564.82 (64-bit). It first told me to ensure Widevine was set to "always enabled" in chrome://plugins. After checking "always enabled" it now tells me to check for an update in chrome://components, however it is not in the list of components.

I've deleted the Chrome config (sudo rm -r ~/.config/google-chrome) and rebooted to no avail. Other users on Reddit reported the same thing here: https://www.reddit.com/r/netflix/comments/423a04/all_any_other_linux_users_getting_a_widevine/

Dist: Ubuntu 15.10 (64-bit)

I think I figured out this problem. It's related to this issue: https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=583009

If for some reason you created a launcher on your machine that uses the path to the direct chrome binary like this:

Exec=/opt/google/chrome/chrome

then you aren't running the normal shell script that sets up some library paths to get widevine to work. You can fix it by changing that line to start with:

Exec=/opt/google/chrome/google-chrome

This can happen if you ever started chrome from the command-line and then locked it to your launcher.

This Exec line will be in a .desktop file in

~/.local/share/applications

Usually it will be called "google-chrome.desktop", but it could have other names.

I experienced the same problem today. I reverted Chrome to the older version.

NOTE: This will only work when you haven't removed apt's cache with sudo apt-get clean

The old file is at /var/cache/apt/archives/google-chrome-stable_47.0.2526.111-1_amd64.deb. Hence I ran

$ sudo dpkg -i /var/cache/apt/archives/google-chrome-stable_47.0.2526.111-1_amd64.deb

Netflix now works for me!