Google updates Chrome regularly with new features, security updates, and more. Chrome downloads those updates and installs them automatically. But how often does that happen? It depends—turns out the Chrome update process is pretty complicated.
Major Stable Versions Every Six Weeks
Chrome is developed in the open and anyone can install the unstable versions. But, when it comes to the Stable branch, builds are released roughly every six weeks. For example, Chrome 73 was released on March 12, and Chrome 74 was released on April 23rd—six weeks to the day.
While it hasn’t always been like this—originally, Chrome updates were pretty sporadic—the Chrome team committed to six-week release intervals back in 2010 and has been relatively consistent since then. Sometimes releases come in four weeks, other times in eight. But generally speaking, it’s always somewhere right around the six-week mark.
It’s also worth noting that Google can adjust the stable release schedule around Chrome “no meeting weeks” and holidays.
Security and Bug Fixes When Necessary
While you can pretty much count on major version releases coming out regularly, bug fix and security updates are much less predictable. Just combing through the Stable release update changelogs shows that there have been three updates since Chrome 73 was released on March 12th, and there’s no discernable interval between each release. That’s pretty much par for the course for these types of updates.
But at the very least you can count on Chrome getting a few bug fix and/or security updates in between major releases.
Chrome will install both major stable updates and smaller updates automatically when they’re available. You can always open the menu and head to Help > About Google Chrome to check for and install any updates immediately, too.
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