Last week, Google announced that it’s temporarily pausing updates for its Chrome browser and Chrome OS. Due to the COVID-19 coronavirus, many people are working from home and relying on their browser more for day-to-day work, so the company wanted to focus on stability and security.
Today, the firm announced that it’s resuming updates, but on a new schedule. Here’s how it’s going to work. In the stable channel, Chrome 81 will arrive the week of April 7 (two weeks from now), and Chrome 83 will arrive in mid-May, which is actually earlier than originally planned. Chrome 82 is canceled completely.
Canary, Dev, and Beta channel updates are all arriving this week. The Beta channel is going to be bumped up to Chrome 81, while Canary and Dev will both get Chrome 83. Google says that it will provide timing for Chrome 84 in a future update.
Presumably, these changes will be reflected across the board with other Chromium-based browsers. That includes Microsoft’s Edge, Brave, Vivaldi, and more. You can expect to see announcements from those companies soon.