It was only a week ago that Google said it would hit pause on Chrome and Chrome OS releases “due to adjusted work schedules” in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. Today, however, the company announced that it would resume releases — but with an adjusted schedule.
In the age of rapid-release schedules for browsers, the exact details of the new release schedules won’t actually matter all that much in practice.
I’m sure most Chrome users have no idea which version they are actually using. In case you do, though, the most noteworthy change here is that version 82 has been canceled. Version 80 is currently in the stable release channel, with version 81 in the beta channel. Around April 7, version 81 will become the stable version and then version 83 will launch a few weeks ahead of schedule in mid-May, while version 82 has gone the way of the dodo. You can find the detailed Chrome release schedule here.
In the end, the important news here is that Chrome and Chrome OS releases are back from their very short update hiatus. That, in and of itself, is a bit of a surprise, given that Google’s update from last week made it seem like we were in for a longer pause and would only see security updates for a while.
Gurupriyan is a Software Engineer and a technology enthusiast, he’s been working on the field for the last 10 years. Currently focusing on mobile app development and IoT.
