Google Says Critical Chrome Update Coming Next Week, Version 81 in Early April

Google has recently announced that it’s pausing major updates for Google Chrome due to the coronavirus outbreak, in an attempt to give devs more things to worry about given the typical compatibility work they must do after releases, and now the company shares more information on how it plans to maintain the browser.

First and foremost, the stable version of Google Chrome that the majority of users are currently running will receive a major update as soon as the next week.

What’s important to know, however, is that this update would only include security and critical fixes for the existing version of Google Chrome. So this update won’t be a new major version, but only fixes that we absolutely need for Chrome 80.

On the other hand, Chrome 81 is just around the corner anyway, as Google says it will land in the first week of April 7.

Chrome 82 canceled

At the same time, Google has decided to cancel Chrome 82 altogether, so after version 81, the company will skip directly to Chrome 83.

“M83 will be released three weeks earlier than previously planned and will include all M82 work as we cancelled the M82 release (all channels),” Google says.

In other words, Google Chrome 83 is the next major update after Chrome 81, and according to the existing schedule, it should land in mid-May.

Beginning this week or the next one, all the other Chrome channels should restart receiving updates normally. Chrome 81 will continue to be a beta, while Chrome 83 will move to the Dev channel.

“We continue to closely monitor that Chrome and Chrome OS are stable, secure, and work reliably. We’ll keep everyone informed of any changes on our schedule on our release blog and will share additional details on the schedule in the Chromium Developers group, as needed,” Google says.