I'm trying to boot a chrome application shortcut in full screen (kiosk mode).

Launching as an application shortcut is straightforward by appending the command --app=. But the kiosk/fullscreen mode --kiosk or --start-maximizeddoesn't work.

I've looked up the commands through man google-chrome. I doesn't look like the option exists.

Is this option hidden, or are there alternatives? A way of starting chrome in fullscreen by default? I'm guessing that there is a way to fake a key press on F11 after chrome has started. Though this really isn't an ideal solution.

3 Answers

How to use Chrome browser in kiosk-mode

Use it like this:

google-chrome --kiosk
chromium-browser --kiosk 

tested with Ubuntu 12.04, google-chrome-stable 30.0.1599.66-1 and chromium-browser 28.0.1500.71-0ubuntu1.12.04. But only if there is no other instance of the browser running.

So close all browser windows and then use it with the option and it should definitely work as expected.

Other things I've learned

Checking --help or man google-chrome didn't help because:

Chromium has hundreds of undocumented command-line flags that are added
and removed at the whim of the developers. Here, we document rela‐
tively stable flags.

So --kiosk is an option that is deliberately un-document, because it might disappear at a whim... which it didn't since over 2 years. But, well you have been warned.

Peter Beverloo has comprised a list of command line options at

In my case only --kiosk didn't help that much because I wanted to run in app mode (--app=URL) -- which disables some distractions like navbar or bookmarks.

I've found from Peter Beverloo's link in other answer this --start-fullscreen flag. So OP would probably go with something like

TLDR

$ google-chrome --start-fullscreen --app=