Google to release Chrome updates every four weeks starting in Q3 2021

Google Chrome users will soon receive new major updates every month, the company announced yesterday. Starting with Chrome version 94 to be released in Q3 2021, Chrome updates will be released every four weeks instead of the six-week release cycle that’s been the norm for more than a decade.

“As we have improved our testing and release processes for Chrome, and deployed bi-weekly security updates to improve our patch gap, it became clear that we could shorten our release cycle and deliver new features more quickly,” the Chrome team explained yesterday. Last year, Mozilla Firefox also adopted a faster four-week release cycle to bring new features to users more quickly.

Google is likely aware that enterprise customers generally don’t want a fast update cadence, and that’s why the company announced that will introduce an Extended Stable option that will receive milestone updates every eight weeks instead of four. “Security updates on Extended Stable will be released every two weeks to fix important issues, but those updates won’t contain new features or all security fixes that the 4 week option will receive,” the company explained.

As Chrome releases follow the update cycle of the Chromium open source project, it remains to be seen if other Chromium-based browsers such as Microsoft Edge will also switch to a faster release cycle. As of today, Edge receives major updates every six weeks just like Google Chrome, and Microsoft Edge 89 was released just yesterday with support for Vertical Tabs, with a new Startup Boost feature to roll out very soon.