Chrome apps to say goodbye to Windows, Mac & Linux

Enterprise Tech

Image Courtesy Linuxbuzz.com

Google will gradually phase out support for Chrome apps on every platform except for Chrome OS.

Beginning later this year, new Chrome apps will be available only to Chrome OS users and won’t be accessible on Windows, Mac, and Linux and in the second half of 2017, the Chrome Web Store will no longer display Chrome apps at all on those operating systems. And by 2018, its good-bye for Chrome apps on Windows, Mac, or Linux.

According to Google, a very tiny percentage of people are actively using Chrome apps. “There are two types of Chrome apps: packaged apps and hosted apps. Today, approximately 1 percent of users on Windows, Mac, and Linux actively use Chrome packaged apps, and most hosted apps are already implemented as regular web apps,” wrote Rahul Roy-Chowdhury, VP Product Management in a Chromium Blog post.

The search engine further adds that with the advancements of the open web, there’s no longer any real place or need for Chrome apps.

Google has advised developers to migrate their Chrome apps to the web. Developers can use powerful new APIs such as service worker and web push to build robust Progressive Web Apps that work across multiple browsers. More capabilities will continue to become available on the web, said Google.