Google Wants to Keep Chrome Always Up-to-Date With ‘Dynamic Patching’

Google is exploring how to keep the desktop version of its Chrome browser always up to date without users needing to restart it to apply updates. Yesterday, the company detailed its work on a new “dynamic patching” technology that will “eliminate the need for a full browser restart in most cases.”

Just like many other Chromium-based browsers, Chrome can already download updates in the background and install them at the next restart of the browser. However, when a critical vulnerability is already being exploited by attackers, Chrome users who delay the restart of the browser for whatever reason will be vulnerable without even knowing it.

“Our long-term vision is a browser that is always up-to-date – continuously and dynamically patched, and automatically restarted during opportune periods of minimal disruption,” the Chrome team explained yesterday. To keep Chrome up to date without the need for a full restart, Google is leveraging Chrome’s existing multi-process architecture.

“Dynamic patching sequentially replaces background child processes (like the Renderer and GPU) with updated binaries on the fly,” the Chrome team explained yesterday. While this feature is still in development, the Chrome team is also looking into ways to make session restores more seamless by saving more state locally.

As a reminder, Google Chrome will soon switch to a faster two-week release cycle, and this will start with the release of Chrome 153 in September 2026. Microsoft will be doing the same for its Edge browser, and both companies explained that this should help to make new features, performance improvements, and fixes available earlier for both users and developers.