Start an external application from a Google Chrome Extension?

I go for hypothesys since I can't verify now.

With Apache, if you make a php script on your local machine calling your executable, and then call this script via POST or GET via html/javascript?

would it function?

let me know.

You can't launch arbitrary commands, but if your users are willing to go through some extra setup, you can use custom protocols.

E.g. you have the users set things up so that some-app:// links start "SomeApp", and then in my-awesome-extension you open a tab pointing to some-app://some-data-the-app-wants, and you're good to go!

Previously, you would do this through NPAPI plugins.

However, Google is now phasing out NPAPI for Chrome, so the preferred way to do this is using the native messaging API. The external application would have to register a native messaging host in order to exchange messages with your application.