Chrome will get an update every four weeks instead of every six weeks later this year

Google developers will provide Chrome with a milestone update every four weeks from the third quarter of 2021. Until now, the company’s browser has been updated every six weeks.

Google Chrome Technical Program Manager Alex Mineer reports that his team is able to shorten the update cycle as developers have improved update testing and release process. This is partly due to the narrowing of the patch gap at the end of 2019 and early 2020: that is the period between the fixing of security problems in the open source code and those in the stable Chrome release. With Chrome 76, that period was still 33 days, but with Chrome 78 it was reduced to 15 days.

As of the release of Chrome 94 in the third quarter of 2021, Google wants to move towards a four-week release schedule for milestone versions. This puts an end to the six-week update cycle that Google used for more than ten years. In addition, there will be an Extended Stable option for IT administrators who want more time to implement the updates. They will then receive an update with new functions every eight weeks. Security updates for major issues will continue to appear every two weeks for the Extended Stable versions as well.