I sometimes need to use a Chromebook and a .p12 certificate to authenticate through TLS (e.g. through the Spanish “Identificación electrónica”). Everytime that happens, I need to “rediscover” the process. Here it is for future memory.

To add a .p12 certificate to ChromeOS’ certificate manager:

  1. Navigate to chrome://certificate-manager
  2. → “Your certificates”
  3. → “View imported certificates from ChromeOS”
  4. → “Import and bind”
  5. Select your certificate from the file picker
  6. Enter your certificate’s password

“Import and bind” stores the certificate on the device’s Trusted Platform Module (TPM).

It might be possible to also store the certificate on a Yubikey through the Personal Identity Verification (PIV) app and then use it on a Chromebook through the Smart Card Connector and a middleware. I haven’t tried this approach yet, but I hear it is tricky on non-enterprise devices.