change default browser to Google chrome on iPhone 4S (OS6) and iPad 2 without Jailbreaking or Javascript Safari hack

Chrome allows me to have all my bookmarks to hand wherever I log in, the keyboard layout is different on the iPad and much more user-friendly, is no slower than Safari, has an easy to use incognito tab for when you are up to no good, has a much nicer app button and gives you more screen to look at.

Chrome allows me to have all my bookmarks to hand wherever I log in

As does Safari - with or without logging into anything.

the keyboard layout is different on the iPad and much more user-friendly

Safari and Chrome use exactly the same keyboard layout - the standard iOS keyboard used by all apps.

is no slower than Safari

Yes, it is. Read: http://googlesystem.blogspot.co.uk/2013/05/chrome-for-ios-not-fast-browser.html

has an easy to use incognito tab for when you are up to no good

As does Safari.

has a much nicer app button

You mean the icon? Well, that's a personal preference and has absolutely no bearing on browser use.

and gives you more screen to look at

Chrome gives you 3 pixels more vertical viewing space. What can you fit in that in reality?

Snowdrop,

I came to this website because I had the same issue has the person that began this thread. I found a solution, albeit a workaround, that suited me, so I posted it to be helpful. I have an iPad because the school I work for gave me one. 18 months ago there were no other tablets that could compete with the iPad 2. Things are different now. I like the iPad, especially for free. The school I work for belongs to an academies trust of some 70 schools. We have a Learning Technologies Team working for all of our academies to find the best technological solutions for delivering lessons. There is a lot out there, new exciting stuff and Google are supplying very useful, free apps that are beginning to rival some of the best paid for software. On the other hand I am in charge of a new Mac Suite and use a Mac at work. We are trying to embrace all the technologies we and we realise that some tools are best for certain jobs.

Now, I don't want to have lengthy discussions about browsers but the tone of your text suggests that you worship at the Apple altar. And like most other religions the Appleists do not listen to reason, you see a world where iPhones, iPads and MacBooks live in harmony. I love the link you supplied as evidence, a blogspot! Well that's it then, if that man says Safari is faster, then that is the Apple god's truth. I'm sure if it is, the difference is negligible. You fell for my bit about the app button - do you think I was serious about that?

To end this I am just going to say that I do not see many people installing Safari on to their PCs, in truth I've never seen anyone do this. On the other hand there are a lot of people that want to use Chrome on PCs, Macs, iPads etc.

I completely agree with your points. I am a PC user because, personally, I find it much easier to use. That's just me. Also, historically, in my case, there weren't the programs I used for work made by Apple. And, because of the fact that more programs were made for Windows than Apple, Microsoft was seen as a "monopoly" and sued to make them unbundle IE from their operating system. But, as you stated, they NEVER forced anyone to use IE and you could make any browser the default.

If we use snozdop's logic, because Apple dominates the table market, they should also be forced to unbundle their OS and Safari too. I use Chrome for the same reasons as you and gmail because I WANT TO. It doesn't really matter why.

I came to this thread for the same reason you did to find out how to make Chrome the default browser because I just noticed that Safari was opening when I clicked a link and there were 20 tabs opened from previous times I'd opened a link by clicking the link. I use Chrome at work and on my PC and like that it syncs web addresses across devices. The problem comes when I click a link on my iPad and it uses Safari. Chrome doesn't have access to that automatic link and I lose productivity because, if I forget to manually copy and paste a link and I go to work or use my PC without having my iPad handy, I don't have that link address. In other words, it costs me money.

Apple may not have a monopoly on the tablet world, but, they are using monopolistic tactics. And, I suspect that, if they don't knock it off, they're going to find themselves in the the same boat as Microsoft and be forced to unbundle Safari. We've already seen other tablets gain popularity for similar reasons in their handling of Adobe Flash. If they want to keep their market share, they really should rethink their policies.

You can just about anything with a jailbroken device. However, you have to decide whether you want to put your security at risk.

Captain Rex wrote:

You can just about anything with a jailbroken device.

Except get technical support here.

Mailbox app lets you change default browser to chrome:)

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/mailbox/id576502633

@scredly

The difference is that both companies bundle their browser with their OS (MS still does it but in a less visible way) but Microsoft doesn't force their users to actually use it like Apple does, they can install and set as default any other browser and. And mail app. And office app. And image editor app, image viewer app, music player app and any other app. Even the shell (Windows Explorer) can be replaced. All this without hacking (jailbrake).

Default browser will work in all apps even Microsoft apps (except some what have IE hardcoded but this isn't MS's fault).

@snozdop

This is so childish argument. You have to accept that there is life outside of Apple's box, there are lots of other things outside what are as good and even better than Apple products.

Some of us are forced to use Apple products in different ways, i.e. get a device as gift or as a work accessory. This shouldn't block us to keep using the apps we use i.e. our favourite browser. You may call me stupid for using Chrome instead of Safari but this is my choice and you can't convince me Safari is better than Chrome and even if it would be two times faster I wouldn't switch because it hasn't got the features for what I started using Chrome.

iOS is stuck at Windows 3.1 level with its home screens full of static icons, keyboard what is more static that some of physical keyboards (i.e. it always shows caps not what the actual state is), no widgets and I could continue until I reach the text limit in this editor.

And FYI, I used iPhone 4 as main and only phone for more than a year and I have an iPad Air too what I use occasionally so what I wrote it's not just a mad theory.

I want to do the same!! I came to this tred because I was wondering if there is an easy way to change my browser to google chrome. Didn't know it was gonna cause such a fuss. The answer to the question of why is simple: because I want to, thats it. I have a mac, an ipad and an Iphone I also love chrome because it gives me lots of options and things I love. I dont need an explination of why one is better than the other, just a solution thank you

Well, judging from this discussion it doesn't look like I'll be able to change my default browser to Chrome on my iPad. Oh well, I'll probably just use Safari with Chrome syncing bookmarks. The only feature I occasionally need on the Chrome is the "Other devices" function anyway, and when I do, I can just launch Chrome instead.

I think this is the website where I learned how to sync my Chrome bookmarks with Safari:

http://www.howtogeek.com/175294/how-to-sync-any-browsers-bookmarks-with-your-ipa d-or-iphone/

Seems like Safari is superior anyway in terms of speed, because of the architecture. I hope the above link and this post help someone.

Always makes me smile when someone claims browser A is faster than browser B. In real life the speed is very much limited by network connection what is the same for all browsers on the same device.

The differences in rendering speed measured by tests are so tiny that are not noticeable in real life scenarios. I.e. if a website loads in 2 seconds doesn't make any difference if browser A loads in 0.1 seconds faster than browser B.

You do have a point. If the difference in speed is sufficiently small and you have a personal preference in favor of one of the browsers, it's better to follow that preference.

However, for people who have no preference on which browser is best and are looking for more or less neutral benchmarks, I recommend reading at least the Tom's Hardware test article presented in this thread. There may be some other tests, but I personally think Tom's Hardware tests are sufficiently unbiased.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ios-web-browser-safari,3326-4.html

Here's the tests for page load times. The averaged out load speeds are roughly 10% (or 0.2 seconds) in favor of Safari when compared to most browsers, with Maxthon coming in as a close 2nd.

The start times are more in favor of Safari, with the Safari apparently being nearly a full second (or roughly 25%) faster on loading the start page (specifically, yahoo.com) than most other browsers. Again, Maxthon comes in as a relatively close 2nd.

There are 10 pages on that test so if you want a more thorough report, better read through all of them.

Yeah I know these types of tests. To illustrate my point: in the composite score the difference between first and last position is 419 milliseconds. In real life people don't notice this difference on a 2 seconds time span.

Looks good in tests but has no relevance in real life usage, especially because the text content is loaded fast and usually the images and videos take the most time to load so on most websites users see relevant content very soon after page load started.

Differences in javascript rendering are about the same in real life. There are very few calculation intensive apps where js performance makes real difference, most of the sites have small scripts what execute in milliseconds so even a 100% difference would not be relevant.

Just reread the test, and thought it would be fair to mention that the speed difference may actually be slightly in favor of Chrome, if you focus on loading cached (previously opened and stored in cache) webpages, as that is roughly 10% faster (or 0,15-0,2 seconds) on Chrome compared to other browsers.

But again, we're talking very small speed differences. I just happened to pick Safari over Chrome as I could sync the bookmarks with my desktop Chrome browser, Safari was the default browser (and could not be changed in my case), and was also slightly superior at what I consider "normal usage" (opening the browser and browsing new web pages on the web).

Unless you're an engineer, an engineering student or something similar (like me) you would do best to ignore these differences if you have any other preferences than raw speed. You'll basically very likely be happy with any of the browsers. Even if the preference would just be happening to like the icon that floats on the bottom bar of your iPad 24/7. 🙂