Google adds temporary flag to Chrome to allow FTP protocol

[harlan4096]

Google revealed plans in 2015 to remove support for the FTP protocol from the company's Google Chrome web browser; several other browser makers, Mozilla in particular, announced plans to remove FTP support from their browsers, Firefox in the case of Mozilla, as well.

Mozilla introduced a preference in Firefox 60 that allowed users to disable FTP support and started to block FTP subresources in Firefox 61.

Google plans to disable support for FTP in Chrome 82 which the company plans to release in the second quarter of 2020. FTP support will be removed gradually from the Chrome web browser; here is the current schedule for the removal of FTP support:

* Chrome 79 -- Support for FTP will be disabled in development versions of Chrome. Flag is added to Chrome to enable FTP support temporarily, and Enterprise policies are made available for controlling FTP support.

* Chrome 80 -- FTP support is disabled gradually in stable versions of Chrome.

* Chrome 82 -- FTP support is removed from the browser. There is no option to re-enable support for FTP in Chrome as FTP code is removed from the browser.

Chrome will defer the handling of FTP urls to the default application on the system it is run on; if a FTP client is installed and associated with the FTP protocol, it will be used to open the resource once support is removed from the web browser.

Chrome users who require FTP support in the browser may enable an experimental (and temporary) flag to restore support for the protocol until Chrome 82 is released.

1. Load chrome://flags in the browser's address bar.
2. Search for Enable FTP.
3. Set the status of the flag Enable support for FTP URLs to Enabled.
4. Restart Chrome.

Please note that the flag will be removed from Chrome 82. It states:

Enable support for FTP URLs

When enabled, the browser will handle navigations to ftp:// URLs by either showing a directory listing or downloading the resource over FTP. When disabled, the browser has no special handling for ftp:// URLs and by default defer handling of the URL to the underlying platform. – Mac, Windows, Linux, Chrome OS, Android

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