How to fix Chrome not opening links in High Sierra

After upgrading to High Sierra, and re-setting Chrome as my default browser, I ran into an annoying problem. Clicking links in Slack and iMessage were opening a blank window in Chrome, instead of actually opening the link. After hunting around, I discovered this Reddit thread. Several users reported that upgrading to Chrome 62 (the beta, at the time of this writing), fixed the issue. I tried this myself and confirmed that it works.

So, if you’re running into the same thing:

  1. Download it from here.
  2. Quit Chrome.
  3. Drag the beta into your Applications folder.
  4. Open Chrome again.
  5. Check that links open correctly.

And it should be working again:

Update, November 2: After using my browser for a bit, this broke again. Haven’t had a chance to look into a new fix yet. Will update this when I find one.

Another update, November 2: It’s working again in beta version 63.0.3239.30, released yesterday.

Update, November 9: As someone noted in the comments, there’s a bug open in the Chromium project for this: https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=777863. One workaround is quitting Chrome and starting it up again.

Updated:

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