Citrix USB Redirection on CloudReady/Chrome OS

As I will continuously mention in every post, well-documented information on the interactions between app/desktop virtualization technologies and chrome os is currently lacking. The goal of this is post is to help address that. This article is one that has been on my list to check off as it’s been a small challenge using Citrix since moving exclusively to CloudReady as my main computing OS. As mentioned in previous posts CloudReady is a branch of chromium OS that supports the capability of running on any hardware, and makes an excellent virtualization endpoint on minimal hardware.

I’ve put together a step-by-step procedure on how to get specific USB devices redirected into a Citrix session, as there are quite a few clarity issues with the current minimal documentation that’s out there. I could not even get a clear answer from Citrix’s own enterprise support team. Before I jump into the details, I want to highlight a couple things to make sure that the right audience is targeted for this post;

• Google Chrome Device Manager licenses are required to configure this setting.
• We’re going to make the assumption that you have access/know-how to configure the policies and settings for your Google site.
• We’re also going to assume you have Citrix USB redirection policies enabled on the server side.

The details:

1. Identify the USB devices that you want to redirect into your VDI session.
2. Gather it’s vendor and product ID by plugging in the device and going to chrome://device-logs on the device that you have the USB peripheral plugged into:
   
   Note: In this particular screenshot the vendor ID would be 65535 and product ID would be 22136.
   
3. This is one of the steps that’s not very clear; you must convert this id to hexadecimal from the decimal format it’s in. You can use a site like here to convert the devices’ values.
   Note: Continuing on the existing example, the vendor id/product id would be: FFFF:5678
   
4. Login to your chrome admin console (https://admin.google.com); Select the OU you want to configure this policy on, navigate to Device Management -> Chrome -> Device Management and find USB Detachable Whitelist (or just search it).
5. In the USB Detachable Whitelist, enter the value identified in step 3 and click Save:
   Important Note: This USB device will no longer be recognized by the chromium OS layer and only will be available to Citrix or the chrome.usb API. The explanation around this requirement is that a USB device on chromium os, in a normal ‘non-whitelist’ configuration, will be consumed by the chromium OS kernel. Devices consumed by the kernel cannot talk to the chrome.usb API. Allowing a whitelist of a particular USB device, allos the device to be detached from their kernel driver and passed through to Citrix.
   
6. Reboot targeted device once the policy is deployed. (Policy refresh can be checked by going to chrome://policy)
7. Launch the Citrix Workspace App and login to your virtual desktop. Find the USB icon on the toolbar and click ‘Add’ to connect your device.
   
   Note: If you are having trouble connecting a device, I would attempt to open a support ticket with Citrix to get a clarified answer. This is a feature of Citrix Workspace that is continuously improving on chromium OS. 

Feel free to comment below with any feedback or questions that come up! Would love to hear about your experience.

Helpful Reference Documentation:

• Citrix Workspace app for Chrome Documentation
• Enabling And Adding USB Devices With Receiver For Chrome