Google pulls Chrome apps for Windows, Linux and macOS from Web Store

Google has pulled Chrome apps from its Web Store for Windows, Linux, and macOS. The apps can only be installed on Chrome OS, Google’s own operating system. The search giant stops with the apps, because hardly anyone uses them.

In the Web Store on other operating systems only extensions and themes can be found, but the tab for apps has disappeared. Developers have received an email stating that the installation files will actually go off the servers early next year.

The Chrome apps come in two varieties. ‘Packaged apps’ and ‘hosted apps’. The latter are little more than favorites that open full screen when the user clicks them, but “packaged apps” also have access to system functions such as devices that users plug into USB ports.

Google advises developers to switch to ‘progressive web apps’. It will support the search giant from mid-2018, Ars Technica reports. The Samsung browser on Galaxy smartphones and Firefox on Android, among others, already support those web apps, just like Microsoft in Windows 10.