How do I prevent students from installing extensions themselves?

There are around 190,000 extensions in the Google Chrome Web Store, and the number in the Edge Add-ons Store is steadily growing too. Alongside very useful, fun and beautiful extensions, there are also plenty of poor and even dangerous ones. There are also roughly half a million games in the Google Play Store ready to be installed on a Chromebook.

If you don't want students to be able to install extensions or apps at random, you need to configure this in your admin environment. In the Google Admin console, this works as follows:

Go to** Devices > Chrome > Apps ** & extensions and select the correct organisational unit (OU) on the left.

In the list under Users & browsers, the first item is: Allow users to install other apps & extensions. Next to it, under Installation policy, select Block all other apps & extensions:

Click Save at the top.

Then click the cog to the right of the option you just changed:

You are now in the Additional app settings screen.

Choose Do not allow for** Android applications on Chrome devices**:

Untick Extension, Hosted app and Legacy packaged app under Allowed types of apps and extensions:

Choose Do not allow for External extensions:

Click Save at the top.

Within a few minutes, the new settings will be applied to all accounts in the selected organisational unit.

Updated on: 03/11/2026