Developer mode in the Chrome OS opens a door to possibilities like installing restricted applications and operating systems on the Chromebook. In simple terms, it gives you the root access to your Chromebook. You may be already familiar with rooting Android devices that come with a lot of pros and cons. The same applies here as well, enabling the developer mode is very useful in different scenarios, but it still comes with a lot of consequences.
So, with all these in mind, let’s have a look at the steps to enable developer mode in Chrome OS. Before that beware of a couple more things.
- It will reset the Chromebook to the factory settings.
- Google will stop providing support for your Chromebook.
So, basically, you may lose some settings, files and you may not be able to get support from the device manufacturer as soon as you enable the developer mode on your Chromebook. If you are OK with that, here is how you can enable the developer mode on Chrome OS.
Enable Developer Mode on Chrome OS
- Boot Chromebook in recovery mode by pressing and holding the Esc and Refresh button simultaneously and then, press the Power button.
- You will be taken to the recovery mode of your Chrome OS with a message “Chrome OS is missing or damaged.” Don’t worry about that, just move forward by pressing Ctrl+D.
- On the next screen, turn OS verification off by pressing Enter.
- Chromebook will restart now and it will display a message saying that the OS verification is turned off. Press Ctrl+D to move forward.
- The OS will start putting itself in the Developer mode. Wait 30 seconds (which can be also used to cancel the process by turning off the device.)
- Now, the system will start putting the device in the Developer mode. Wait for the process to complete
- After the process has completed, it will show you a welcome screen with language, keyboard, and network selection options alongside a box to “Enable debugging features.” Check that box and continue.
- On the next screen, provide the root password and click on Enable.
- That’s it, the developer mode is enabled on your Chrome OS.
Now, we can check if everything went well using the Crosh shell. Press Ctrl+Alt+T and type shell which will bring you a full bash-like shell. If it doesn’t something went wrong somewhere. Go through the steps carefully and do it again.
How to Turn Developer Mode OFF?
If you want to turn off developer mode on Chromebook, just press Space bar at the start-up screen when your Chromebook is powering on. The developer mode will be turned off and you will no longer be able to access the shell commands.