Google is working on Chrome updates that don’t require a restart

Google is working hard to apply Chrome updates without requiring you to restart your browser. In a post Thursday, Google explains its strategy for dealing with issues in the age of AI, noting that it’s trying to make updates less disruptive by “investing in a ‘power patch’ that will eliminate the need to restart the entire browser.”

According to Google, AI-powered security tools have already helped the company find and fix many bugs. Chrome 149 and 150, for example, had 1,072 bug fixes, more than the number of patches in the previous 23 versions combined. This is one of the reasons why Chrome is changing for two weeks of release starting in September with security updates in between. However, Google says it is considering introducing two weekly updates to combat “powerful AI attacks”.

In order for these updates to be successful, Google is trying to “remove the burden” from users, who may be vulnerable to “N-day”, which occurs when hackers take advantage of newly released bugs that have not yet been downloaded to the user’s device.

Along with working on power patches, Google is also trying to find “a good time to restart automatically, where we can guarantee the recovery of the feature.” Google has already implemented a version of this in Chrome 150 on macOS, since the browser takes advantage of “a feature where applications continue in the background even when all windows are closed.” Chrome will automatically restart when it detects changes in a windowless environment, Google says.

“Our long-term vision is a browser that stays up-to-date – persistent and stable, and automatically restarts during the slightest interruption,” Google writes.