In January 2020, Google announced its plans to expand its phased approach to end support for Chrome Apps. However, the company now says that it is postponing the deprecation timeline for Chrome Apps on all platforms following feedback from customers and partners. As per the revised timeline, enterprise admins will be able to continue submitting new private and unlisted Chrome Apps to the Chrome Web Store through June 2022. The platform stopped accepting new public Chrome apps back in March.
Meanwhile, all developers will be able to update their existing apps through June 2021 when Google will end general support for Chrome Apps on Windows, Mac and Linux. According to Google, “organizations will be able to use a policy setting to extend support on Windows, Mac, and Linux through June 2022” as part of the revised timeline. Chrome OS, meanwhile, will continue to support all Chrome Apps through the same period without any policy setting.
The Chrome Web Store will stop accepting new and updated private and unlisted Chrome apps in June 2022. The company will also end support for Chrome Apps, NaCl, PNaCl, and PPAPI for all platforms at the same time.
This change will not impact support for Chrome Extensions, with Google saying that it will continue to support and invest in Chrome Extensions on all existing platforms. In an official blog post, the company said: “Fostering a robust ecosystem of extensions is critical to Chrome’s mission and we are committed to providing a useful extension platform for customizing the browsing experience for all users”.
