Understand how policies work together

For administrators who manage Chrome Browser or Chrome devices for a business or school.

Here are some of the policies that you can use to change the behavior of other policies.

Just getting started? See Understand Chrome policy management.

Merge group policies

Depending on your settings, policies that belong to an atomic policy group need to be set from the same source to take effect. Otherwise, only the policies from the source with the highest priority apply. You can use PolicyListMultipleSourceMergeList or PolicyDictionaryMultipleSourceMergeList to merge policies that belong to a group. That way, policies that belong to a group apply, regardless of their source. 

For details about policy groups, see Atomic Policy Groups.

Review policies impacting other policies

For details on enforcement, click the policy link.

Cloud policy to override platform policy

Allows cloud policies to take precedence over platform policies if they conflict. If you disable this policy or leave it unconfigured, platform policies take precedence over cloud policies.

Limits:

  • Currently, this policy is only available as a platform policy.
  • Even if you enable this policy, a mandatory policy still overrides a recommended policy and a machine scope policy still overrides a user scope policy.
  • This policy doesn’t change user policy behavior, and a user cloud policy will still override a platform policy.

Enforce from:

  • Windows Group Policy—Google Chrome cloud policy overrides Platform policy
  • Mac / Linux preference name—CloudPolicyOverridesPlatformPolicy

See: Policy details for Windows/Mac/Linux
Merge list policies from multiple sources

Specifies a list of policies, set from multiple sources, that you want to merge. For example, the ExtensionInstallBlackList policy can be set by cloud, platform, or Microsoft® Active Directory® sources. Use this policy to merge the policies' values from each source.

Limits:

  • Even if you enable this policy, a mandatory policy still overrides a recommended policy and a machine scope policy still overrides a user scope policy.
  • This policy doesn’t change user policy behavior, and a user cloud policy will still override a platform policy.
  • A user cloud policy doesn’t merge with any other policy.
  • This policy only works on list policies.

  • PolicyListMultipleSourceMergeList and PolicyDictionaryMultipleSourceMergeList cannot be merged.

Enforce from:

  • Windows Group Policy—Allow merging list policies from different sources
  • Mac / Linux preference name—PolicyListMultipleSourceMergeList 

See: Policy details for Windows/Mac/Linux
Merge dictionary policies from multiple sources

Specifies a list of dictionary policies, set from multiple sources, that you want to merge. For example, the ExtensionSettings policy can be set by cloud, platform, or Microsoft Active Directory sources. Use this policy to merge the first level keys of the dictionary from each source.

Limits:

  • Even if you enable this policy, a mandatory policy still overrides a recommended policy and a machine scope policy still overrides a user scope policy.
  • This policy doesn’t change user policy behavior, and a user cloud policy will still override a platform policy.
  • A user cloud policy doesn’t merge with any other policy.
  • This policy only works on:
    • ContentPackManualBehaviorURLs
    • DeviceLoginScreenPowerManagement
    • ExtensionSettings
    • KeyPermissions
    • PowerManagementIdleSettings
    • ScreenBrightnessPercent
    • ScreenLockDelays

Enforce from:

  • Windows Group Policy—Allow merging dictionary policies from different sources
  • Mac / Linux preference name—PolicyDictionaryMultipleSourceMergeList

See: Policy details for Windows/Mac/Linux
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