How to set CLI flags for Google Chrome?

Look in /opt/google/chrome/google-chrome.desktop or /usr/share/applications/google-chrome.desktop for the following line:

Exec=/opt/google/chrome/google-chrome %U

Add the flag you need in there, save it, then run Chrome again and pin it to your launcher, that should do the trick.

A way is to set flags in the environment variable CHROMIUM_USER_FLAGS:

export CHROMIUM_USER_FLAGS="insert_content_here"

For xubuntu/xfce4, though it might work similarly elsewhere:

cp /usr/share/applications/google-chrome.desktop ~/.local/share/applications/google-chrome.desktop

and modify the three Exec= lines in ~/.local/share/applications/google-chrome.desktop to include the arguments you want. Because it has the same filename, xfce4-whiskermenu will pick up only your modified google-chrome.desktop.

If Chrome is your default browser, another application opening a URL will still cause Chrome to launch without your arguments. To fix this, create a new file ~/bin/google-chrome with these contents:

/usr/bin/google-chrome YOUR_EXTRA_ARGS "$@"

and chmod +x ~/bin/google-chrome. Then, in Preferred Applications, set your Web Browser to Other... and enter:

/home/YOUR_USERNAME/bin/google-chrome "%s"

Also, to avoid having to change the arguments in four places in the future, you can point the Exec= lines in google-chrome.desktop to your /home/YOUR_USERNAME/bin/google-chrome.

I'm running Xubuntu and I was trying to figure this one out as well. I tried the solution to edit the .desktop file. I haven't updated, but I have the same concern as you (will it get overwritten). I tried a different option where I added an alias to my .bashrc file.

alias chromium-browser="/usr/bin/chromium-browser [FLAGS]"