How to Turn On Developer Mode On Your Chromebook
At first glance, your chromebook might appear as a boring hardware with a very basic operating system designed to get simple work done. This however can’t be so far away from the truth.
Google might put too much emphasis on a simplistic overlay for its sandboxed browser-based operating system, but dive deeper and below the crust is an abundance of features reserved for tinkerers and advance users.
To grant yourself access to the most intricate part of your Chromebook, you will need to enable what is called Developer Mode.
Though the process isn’t recommended, prying open the browser-based core system to get to its well hidden juicy features does come with its own rewards and potential caveats.
Despite sharing similar names, Developer Mode and Developer Channel are two different entities.
Whilst the later is centered around turning your machine into a lab rat for power features — including bugs — before they become widely available, the former is akin to rooting your Android device to grant yourself access to the inner workings of both the hardware and software of your handset.
Enabling Developer Mode does
Advantages
- Allows you to side-load Android apps
- Access to the developer shell
- Allows you to install a standard Linux desktop environment via crouton and run Linux apps
Disadvantages
- Your device becomes less secure as some of the sentinels that makes your Chrome OS device secure are disabled
- You risk voiding any warranty for your device since Developer Mode isn’t covered
- Risk rendering your device unusable
- Risk of losing all your data
How To Turn On Developer Mode
- Back up any data currently stored in your Chromebook since going into Developer Mode deletes everything from login information to locally stored files
- The next step in the process is to boot your Chromebook into recovery mode. Power off the device — if it is on — then simultaneously holding the Esc and Refresh (the circular arrow) keys plus the power button.
- At this point, you should get some sort of warning/error message, ignore it and proceed to the next step.
- Press Enter and proceed to set up your Chromebook.
- Done!
How To Revert From Developer Mode
If for some reason, you’ve had your fill with Developer Mode and want to revert your device back to its original-more secure state, the steps are quite simple.
- To disable Developer Mode, first, you will need to Reboot your Chromebook
- Hit the Spacebar to re-enable verification when you see the “OS verification is off” means the process is initiated and Developer Mode will be disabled as soon as your Chromebook reboots.
- Done!
If you encounter any issue in the process, feel free to hit us up in the comments!
Its probably a dead end if I ask for instructionns on how to turn on dev. option when its been disabled by admin. ??
Yes, you’d need permission from the admin if it’s been disabled.