How Do You Add the Silverlight Plugin to Chrome?
You can't. Chrome permanently removed support for NPAPI plugins — the technology Silverlight depended on — with Chrome 45 in September 2015, according to the Chromium project's NPAPI deprecation guide, and Microsoft's official lifecycle announcement confirms Silverlight itself reached end of support on October 12, 2021. No current version of Chrome, on any operating system, can load the Silverlight plugin, and no setting, extension, or download changes that.
Why there is no install button anymore
When Silverlight worked in Chrome, it worked as an NPAPI plugin: a piece of native code the browser loaded into its own process. Google announced in its Final Countdown for NPAPI post that this architecture was a leading cause of hangs, crashes, and security incidents, and laid out a staged removal. The deprecation timeline went from blocking plugins by default, to hiding the override flag, to deleting the plugin-loading code entirely in September 2015.
That last step matters for anyone searching for an install method today. Chrome didn't just disable Silverlight — the code that could load it no longer exists in the browser. There is nothing for an installer to hook into. We cover the mechanics in more depth in why Silverlight won't run in modern browsers.
What about the old `enable-npapi` flag?
For a brief window in 2015, typing `chrome://flags/#enable-npapi` restored plugin support, and many older tutorials still describe this. That flag was removed when NPAPI support was deleted. On a current Chrome build the flag simply doesn't exist, so guides that mention it are describing a browser that shipped roughly a decade ago.
Be careful with 'Silverlight for Chrome' downloads
Searches for a Chrome-compatible Silverlight installer surface plenty of third-party download sites. At best these repackage the old Windows installer, which installs the plugin on your system but still can't make Chrome load it. Since Microsoft no longer supports or patches Silverlight, installing the runtime from an unofficial source gets you unmaintained software and no working result. See can you still download Microsoft Silverlight for what official channels still offer.
What to do instead
What works depends on why you need the plugin:
- You need to reach one legacy business app. The realistic route is Internet Explorer mode in Microsoft Edge, which is designed for exactly this situation — see does Edge's IE mode run Silverlight for the caveats.
- A public website is asking for Silverlight. Almost every consumer service that once used Silverlight rebuilt on standard web technology years ago. Try the site in a current browser without any plugin, or look for the service's updated app.
- You own the app. There's no browser-side fix; the application itself has to move to a modern stack such as Blazor or standards-based web technology.
The short version
Adding Silverlight to Chrome stopped being possible in 2015, and the plugin's own retirement in 2021 closed the story from Microsoft's side. Any energy spent on installers and flags today is better spent on the two routes that actually work: Edge's IE mode for legacy access, or migration for apps you control.