How to activate Silverlight in Chrome

Starting with version 42 of Google Chrome, users have found that the Silverlight plugin does not work in this browser. Taking into account that there is a significant amount of content on the Internet made with this technology, the problem is quite serious (and using several browsers separately is not the best solution). See also How to enable Java in Chrome.

The reason why the Silverlight plugin does not work with the latest versions of Chrome is that Google refused to support the NPAPI plugins in its browser and as of version 42 this support is disabled by default (the refusal is due to that such plugins are not always stable and may have security problems).

Silverlight not working in Google Chrome: how to fix the problem

To enable the Silverlight plugin, you will first need to re-enable NPAPI support in Chrome by following the steps below (with the Microsoft Silverlight plugin itself already installed on your computer).

1. In the address bar of your browser, enter the address chrome: // flags / # enable-npapi - This will open a page with the configuration of the experimental features of Chrome and at the top of the page (when you go to the exact address) you will see "Enable NPAPI" highlighted, click "Enable".
2. Restart your browser, go to the page where Silverlight is required, right-click where the content should be and select "Run this plugin" from the context menu.

This completes all the steps necessary to connect Silverlight and everything should work without a problem.

Learn more.

According to Google, in September 2015 the compatibility with the NPAPI plugins, and therefore with Silverlight, will be completely removed from the Chrome browser. However, there are reasons to hope that this will not happen: they promised to deactivate such support by default since 2013, then in 2014, and only in 2015 did we see it.

Apart from that, it seems to me doubtful that they bet on it (for not offering other options to see Silverlight contents), since it would mean losing, although not too much, but a quota of their browser on users' computers.