Chrome Remote Desktop host setup instructions not showing for Ubuntu 18.04

I'm currently trying to set up chrome remote desktop on a new computer with Ubuntu 18.04. But whenever I try to follow the instructions on , it skips the setup stage and goes straight to "Set up another device for remote access".

To clarify, the steps are:

1. Install chrome extension
2. Install Debian file
3. Checked that it was successful using systemctl status chrome-remote-desktop
4. The blue setup button on gets stuck forever
5. If I try to open it up in a new tab or refresh, the only option I have is to "Set up another device for remote access" or remote into a device I've setup already.

I've gotten this to work on a virtual machine earlier this year and it works fine on my windows computer. But it seems to only fail on my Ubuntu 18.04 computer. I've also tried reinstalling google-chrome, chrome-remote-desktop chrome extension and chrome-remote-desktop Debian file installation.

Does anyone have suggestions on what might be going on?

4 Answers

If anyone else has this issue, try this:

mkdir ~/.config/chrome-remote-desktop

Just checked again and looks like they've fixed it so it works again! If anyone else has this issue, an update should do!

Happened to me with Ubuntu 20+:

I installed Google Chrome and, then, tried to install Chrome Remote Desktop.

Google Chrome tries to open chrome-remote-desktop_current_amd64.deb with Snap Store and then fails.

Solution: install gdebi, make it the default application to open .deb files and try again to install Chrome Remote Desktop.

I had the same problem on Ubuntu 21.04, so:

1. Try installing the .deb package with dpkg and look at the errors. Mine for example listed this:

$ sudo dpkg -i "./path/to/file.deb"
[sudo] password for user:
...
dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of chrome-remote-desktop:
chrome-remote-desktop depends on xvfb; however: Package xvfb is not installed.
chrome-remote-desktop depends on xbase-clients; however: Package xbase-clients is not installed.
chrome-remote-desktop depends on python3-psutil; however: Package python3-psutil is not installed.

If the output is similar to this, try installing them. Like:

$ sudo apt install xvfb xbase-clients python3-psutil

Hope this helped.