A Google Chrome App, or commonly just Chrome App, was a certain type of (non-standardized)

web application A web application (or web app) is application software that is accessed using a web browser. Web applications are delivered on the World Wide Web to users with an active network connection. History In earlier computing models like client-serv ...

that ran on the Google Chrome

web browser A web browser is application software for accessing websites. When a user requests a web page from a particular website, the browser retrieves its files from a web server and then displays the page on the user's screen. Browsers are used o ...

. Chrome apps can be obtained from the

Chrome Web Store Chrome Web Store is Google's online store for its Chrome web browser. As of 2019, Chrome Web Store hosts about 190,000 extensions and web apps. History Chrome Web Store was publicly unveiled in December 2010, and was opened on February 11, 20 ...

where apps,

extensions Extension, extend or extended may refer to: Mathematics Logic or set theory * Axiom of extensionality * Extensible cardinal * Extension (model theory) * Extension (predicate logic), the set of tuples of values that satisfy the predicate * E ...

, and themes can be installed or bought. There are two types of apps, hosted and packaged, which have different locations of their executable and are targeted at different use cases. Support for Chrome Apps has been removed from Chrome in June 2022, except on ChromeOS where support has been extended until at least January 2025.

History

On August 19, 2016, Google announced that it would begin phasing out Chrome Apps for Windows, Mac and Linux (both packaged and hosted) by the end of 2016, finishing the process in early 2018. The company said that such apps would continue to be supported and maintained on

ChromeOS ChromeOS, sometimes stylized as chromeOS and formerly styled as Chrome OS, is a Linux-based operating system designed by Google. It is derived from the open-source ChromiumOS and uses the Google Chrome web browser as its principal user interfa ...

"for the foreseeable future". The plan later changed, with Chrome Apps set to last until June 2022 for ChromeOS. On January 15, 2020, Google announced that Chrome would begin phasing out support for Chrome Apps completely starting in March 2020, with support for consumers until June 2021 and enterprise until June 2022.

Types

Chrome apps can be hosted or packaged. Hosted apps have their background web pages on a remote server and the app acts like a

bookmark A bookmark is a thin marking tool, commonly made of card, leather, or fabric, used to keep track of a reader's progress in a book and allow the reader to easily return to where the previous reading session ended. Alternate materials for boo ...

or shortcut; packaged apps have off-line functionality making use of local storage.

Packaged

Packaged apps were launched on September 5, 2013. They have features very similar to a native desktop app, namely offline capable (by default), can interact with hardware devices, and can access local storage. Packaged apps are not confined to the regular Chrome interface and can display without a classic window menu and

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems schedule tasks for efficient use of the system and may also i ...

user interface In the industrial design field of human–computer interaction, a user interface (UI) is the space where interactions between humans and machines occur. The goal of this interaction is to allow effective operation and control of the machine f ...

elements.

Hosted

Hosted apps are the original type of Chrome apps. They contain a single

manifest file A manifest file in computing is a file containing metadata for a group of accompanying files that are part of a set or coherent unit. For example, the files of a computer program may have a manifest describing the name, version number, license and t ...

that contains the URL and additional information about the app. Hosted apps are usually offline and are subject to regular web page security restrictions.

References

External links