Google announced that it’s shifting the Chrome OS release cycle later this year to match the cadence with which it plans to release major updates to the Chrome browser itself.
“To deliver new features more rapidly to consumers while also continuing to prioritize the key pillars of Chrome OS – security, stability, speed and simplicity – Chrome OS will move to a 4-week stable channel starting with M96 in Q4,” the company said. It also plans to introduce a new release channel for education and enterprise customers with a six-month update cycle.
Google said in March that Chrome followed a six-week release cycle for over a decade. (Smaller updates are released more frequently than that, but major updates typically follow that schedule.) But the company said that improvements to its testing processes as well as bi-weekly security updates will allow it to shift to a four-week release cycle in the third quarter.
It makes sense for the Chrome OS release cycle to speed up alongside Chrome’s. Being an operating system instead of a browser does result in additional responsibility, however, which explains the plans for an education- and enterprise-specific release channel. Updating a personal device is relatively easy; updating many professional devices is not.
Google said that Chrome’s four-week release cycle is set to begin with Chrome 94. The new Chrome OS update cadence will be more complicated: The four-week release cycle is set to go into effect with Chrome OS M94, then the company plans to skip M95, and then the six-month release channel is supposed to debut by the time Chrome OS M96 is released.
