Google to end support for Chrome apps on all platforms outside Chrome OS

Screencap: Ubergizmo

In the coming months and year, Google will slowly be phasing out support for Chrome apps on other platforms outside of its own Chrome OS platform. This means, Windows, Mac, and Linux users will lose access to them. By the second half of 2017, these apps won’t show up on the Chrome Web Store. Newly-published apps coming out at the latter part of this year will only be available on Chrome OS. By early 2018, users can no longer load these apps. What will be remaining there are the extensions and themes.

And while it seems like a big deal, it would seem only a small number of users are using Chrome apps. According to Google, “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.” And with the advancements in open web, Google feels like there isn’t a real need for these apps. Google is encouraging developers to migrate their Chrome apps to the web or help out Google with new APIs to fill in gaps left by the Chrome apps.