Google is Changing its Chrome Release Schedule Next Year

Google announced this week that it plans to change its release schedule for new Chrome updates starting in 2023. Just like Microsoft Edge, Google Chrome will remain on a 4-week release cycle, but Google will soon start pushing an early stable new version of its web browser a week earlier to a subset of users on the Stable channel.

“By releasing stable to a small percentage of users early, we get a chance to monitor the release before it rolls out to all of our users. If any showstopping issue is discovered, it can be addressed while the impact is relatively small,” the Chrome team explained, adding that the change will have “little impact” on developers.

In practice, Google plans to make Chrome 110 available on the Beta channel on January 12, 2023. The “early Stable version” will then be released to a subset of users on the Stable channel on February 1. Everyone else on the Stable channel will start receiving Chrome 110 on February 7.

It doesn’t seem possible to opt out of receiving early stable versions of Chrome if you’re on the Stable channel, but Google emphasized that only a “small percentage” of Chrome users would receive these “early stable” releases. Google Chrome remains the most popular desktop web browser by a pretty wide margin, so let’s hope this new release schedule won’t be too disrupting for users.