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Customizing uBlock Origin Lite Preferences with Group Policy on domain-joined Windows Amazon WorkSpaces and AppStream 2.0 instances

Using Group Policy, you can customize uBlock Origin Lite at scale. This article will show you how.

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Dan Garibay
Amazon Employee
Published Dec 21, 2024

Overview

Articles in this series

Prerequisites

Edge

Chrome

Conclusion

Overview

This article is part of my series on deploying and managing uBlock Origin/uBlock Origin Lite. This article will focus on how you can deploy custom preferences for uBlock Origin Lite using Group Policy for Active Directory domain joined Windows WorkSpaces and AppStream 2.0 deployments.
This article will demonstrate a custom policy for uBlock Origin Lite on the Microsoft Edge and Google Chrome browsers. The policy will disable the "first run" dashboard of these extensions, so that they do not interrupt/confuse end users on their first time opening the browser. You can use these examples in combination with the full list of customizations on the uBlock Origin Lite documentation for these extensions to make many other custom configurations.

Articles in this series

Prerequisites

For this walkthrough, you should have the following prerequisites:
  • An AWS account
  • An existing deployment of Amazon WorkSpaces or Amazon AppStream 2.0, as well as familiarity with which Active Directory OU or OUs your deployment(s) utilize.
    • The steps in this article only apply to domain joined Windows based instances.
  • An existing Active Directory deployment.
    • Permissions to import new Group Policy templates into Active Directory
    • Permissions to create and deploy Group Policies in Active Directory
    • Access to a domain joined computer with the Active Directory Remote Server Administration Tools installed. This computer will be referred to as your “management endpoint” in the steps going forward.
  • General knowledge of Active Directory administration
  • You have already followed this article to deploy uBlock Origin/uBlock Origin Lite using Group Policy.

Edge

  1. On your management endpoint, open gpmc.msc.
  2. Expand your forest and domain until you locate the OU which contains your WorkSpaces. Select the OU, and choose “Create a new GPO in this domain, and Link it here…”
    1. If you need to associate the policy to multiple OUs, you can link them to the policy after creation.
      1. Alternate select the additional OU.
      2. Select “Link an Existing GPO…”
      3. Select the policy.
  3. Select your newly created Group Policy and choose “Edit…”.
  4. Under “Computer Configuration”, expand Policies, Windows Settings, and then select Registry.
  5. Alternate select the Registry option and select New, Registry Item. Fill out the New Registry Properties dialog box as shown:
    1. Action: Update
    2. Hive: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE
    3. Key Path: Software\Policies\Microsoft\Edge\3rdparty\extensions\cimighlppcgcoapaliogpjjdehbnofhn\policy
    4. Value name: disableFirstRunPage
    5. Value type: REG_DWORD
    6. Value data: 1
    7. Base: Decimal
  6. Select OK at the bottom of the properties panel to save the settings.

Chrome

  1. On your management endpoint, open gpmc.msc.
  2. Expand your forest and domain until you locate the OU which contains your WorkSpaces. Select the OU, and choose “Create a new GPO in this domain, and Link it here…”
    1. If you need to associate the policy to multiple OUs, you can link them to the policy after creation.
      1. Alternate select the additional OU.
      2. Select “Link an Existing GPO…”
      3. Select the policy.
  3. Select your newly created Group Policy and choose “Edit…”.
  4. Under “Computer Configuration”, expand Policies, Windows Settings, and then select Registry.
  5. Alternate select the Registry option and select New, Registry Item. Fill out the New Registry Properties dialog box as shown:
    1. Action: Update
    2. Hive: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE
    3. Key Path: Software\Policies\Google\Chrome\3rdparty\extensions\ddkjiahejlhfcafbddmgiahcphecmpfh\policy
    4. Value name: disableFirstRunPage
    5. Value type: REG_DWORD
    6. Value data: 1
    7. Base: Decimal
  6. Select OK at the bottom of the properties panel to save the settings.

Conclusion

This article has demonstrated how to set up a preference for uBlock Origin Lite to skip the first run dashboard on Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge. This article also provided a link to the uBlock Origin Lite customization documentation. You can use Group Policy to implement other customizations in the same method as this article covers.
 

Any opinions in this post are those of the individual author and may not reflect the opinions of AWS.

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