Find Google Chrome installation directory using Terminal

How do I find the Google Chrome Installation Directory/Path using the command line? Is Google Chrome always installed to the default path, the "/Applications/" folder?

I have tried the following commands. Can anyone suggest what I am doing wrong?

1. locate "*Chrome.app"

   When i used this command it only search the DB entries of installed software.

2. find / -type d -name "*Chrome.app"

   Lists all the files on the system.

How can I find only Google Chrome’s path using this command, or is there another way?

Solution 1:

You can query for this kind of information using the Launch Services database to dump a list of all registered apps, then grep for the one you want (in this case Google Chrome), for example (using Mountain Lion 10.8.4):

/System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Versions/A/Frameworks/LaunchServices.framework/Versions/A/Support/lsregister -dump | grep -i "google chrome"

gives me the output:

path:          /Applications/Google Chrome.app/
executable:    Contents/MacOS/Google Chrome
path:          /Applications/Google Chrome.app/Contents/Versions/27.0.1453.116/Google Chrome Helper.app/
executable:    Contents/MacOS/Google Chrome Helper

Solution 2:

You could do this from a shell prompt:

osascript -e 'POSIX path of (path to application "Chrome")'

However note that this will also launch Chrome if it isn't already running.

See: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/5860517/path-to-application-without-opening-it

Solution 3:

Your second command

find / -type d -name "*Chrome.app" 

should work - it works ok on my system.

What do you mean by "List all the file on system"? "find" will search your file system from '/' as you specified, but if you think Chrome.app could get installed in some odd place, "find" is one sure way to locate it.