Google says it will speed up the release of Chrome updates. Starting with Chrome 94 in Q3, 2021, Google will release milestones from its browser every four weeks, instead of every six weeks. This is the first time Google has accelerated its Chrome release scheme for more than a decade.
“As we improved our testing and release processes for Chrome, and deployed bi-weekly security updates to improve our patch gap, it became clear that we were able to shorten our release cycle and deliver new features faster,” explains Alex Mineer, Technical Program Manager by Chrome.
While consumers will see a new version of Chrome every month, IT administrators can opt for a new Extended Stable option that includes milestone releases every eight weeks. Extended Stable will be available to enterprise administrators and Chromium providers who need extra time to manage updates in their environments. Important security updates will still appear every two weeks in this release, but Extended Stable will hopefully avoid the situation where silent Chrome experiments anger IT administrators.
Google says it is also planning “multiple stable release options” for Chrome OS and will share details with Chrome OS drivers in the coming months.
Since other popular browsers like Microsoft’s Edge and Brave also use Chromium, we reached out to see how it might affect them. Brave tells us that they plan to go to a four-week release cycle as well, instead of the current three-week cadences: ‘Instead of a big Chromium bump every 2nd release, we will have a have big Chromium bumps every time it is released going forward, ”says a spokesperson. Microsoft declined to comment on its plans for Edge.
Update March 5, 16:17 ET: Brave’s new release cycle has been added and Microsoft does not want to comment.