My Chrome extension is distributed through the Chrome store, which is supposed to manage the auto-update itself and push it after a few hours to my users.
I pushed an update more than one week ago and it seems that is hasn't been pushed to any user. The Chrome store is displaying the latest version number, but browsers are just not updating.
I know how to force my browser to update but I want the update to push to all my users.
Is there any thing I'm missing? Thanks!
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I'm building a Chrome Extension and we published the first version of it recently. We already have a group of users who installed it.
We are now trying to push an update (with bug fixes and new features), but are getting mixed messages from Chrome documentation as it pertains to the user experience for updates. They've mentioned that by default, the updated version will be pushed to the Chrome Web Store, but existing users need to restart their browser for the update to be pushed or manually do to chrome://extensions.
Is there a way to automatically push an update to a user that has already installed our Chrome Extension (without any action required by users)?
We expected the new version to be automatically updated for the existing users. However, when the new version was published, the existing users would still be on the previously version 2-3 days after (without restarting their browser)
We expected the users to automatically access the new version without any action to the browser or extension dashboard.
Normally the browser autonomously checks if there are updates every few hours. If I remember correctly every 4 hours.
Therefore it is unlikely that the browser will not receive the update if the browser has been open for several days.
However, if the extension is MV2, if there is a persistent background script and if at least one extension page is currently open in the browser then the update may be stucked until that page\tab is closed.
Once the latter is closed, the extension should receive and install the update at the next browser check.
If your extension falls into this case then you could define a handler for the runtime.onUpdateAvailable event where you force the reload of the extension.
"Is there a way to automatically push an update to a user that has already installed our Chrome Extension (without any action required by users)?"
If by "a user" you mean "some users but not all",
then you could think of a system that sends a push message from your backend and manage its reception from a service worker which will run the runtime.requestUpdateCheck method only for the desired user(s).
However, this will imply the implementation of a sort of user registration\authentication in order to recognize it at the moment of the forced update request.
Note that you will not be able to selectively allow some users to upgrade while excluding all others. Basically, with this technique you would speed up the update only for one or a part of your users, so this method (not exactly easy to implement) could be overly redundant.
In our product we force install the Chrome extension we ship via Policy setting ExtensionForceInstallList. The setting is in the proper format and initially installs our Chrome extension from the Google web store just fine.
The problem is when I publish a newer version those same clients do not pull down the new version unless our tester goes to the Manage Extensions page and clicks Update.
These were on clients that brought up the Chrome browser today (a Tuesday) on a Chrome extension that was formally "published" on the previous Friday.
I am using direct upload to Google Chrome Store via Webstore Developer Dashboard. I uploaded yesterday and it was published at night. This morning my colleague switched on his mac, opened Chrome, waited for 20 minutes, but extension was not updated. I did the same and my extension was updated.
What can it be? Are there any tweaks to make installed extension be up-to-date instantly? We do not want our users to use different versions of our extension.
There is a period of a few hours to a week where users could be using the old version of your extension. There isn't really anything you can do about it.
I need to edit and then publish my Chrome extension. I know that it sometimes takes over an hour to publish an extension, but once it has been published, can I assume that all users are using this new extension version? Or might they still be using the old one for a while? And, if so, for how long?
I publish via the Chrome dashboard. Sorry if this is the wrong place to ask. I have tried searching through Chrome's documentation.
Issue: I need to update my server side code, but if a user is still using the old extension version, then it will fail very badly.
You should not make any assumptions about the extension update frequency. The update frequency is 5 hours by default. This value can be changed by the user through the --extensions-update-frequency flag. In practice, most users will stick to the defaults though. And do not forget that it is unreasonable to expect that all of your users have their computer online all the time.
You should keep the code for the old and new version at the server's side. If you haven't done before, include a version identifier in your request. This version identifier does not need to map 1:1 to your Chrome extension version; just use a value and keep incrementing it for every significant API update.
If you did not include a version identifier in your previous version, just assume that the user is using the old version if the version identifier is missing from the request, and consistently include the version identifier in requests from your new Chrome extension.
If you have set a minimum_chrome_version in your manifest file, then the user will also be stuck at an old version of your extension if they use an older Chrome version.
Though not relevant for your specific situation, extension authors can choose to distribute their extension to a specific percentage of users via the dashboard at the Chrome Web store. When this feature is used, you obviously have users who are still using the old version.
You have to handle in your code the possibility of users having the old version. Its not published how long that might be but from experience it can be a full day at least.
According to the docs and other sources the update happens within a few hours from publishing.
Every few hours, the browser checks whether any installed extensions or apps...
The default update check frequency is several hours,
I suggest you implement a mechanism to check the version of the extension making the request and if it is not current, either fallback to differently handling the request (based on the old server-side code), or inform the user they have to update (although I would not advice that, as it might scare and annoy users).
In order to force an update of one's extension:
but you can force an update using the Extensions page's Update extensions now button.
Basically, you have to go to the Extensions page, check "Developer mode" and press the "Update extensions" button that appears.
Bottom line
I would:
Implement a mechanism to include the version in a request
Maintain two code based on the server (for a few days only)
serve each request based on the version
I'm making an extension for Google Chrome and I use code for autoupdating. This is because the extension isn't yet in Google Chrome webstore. But in a few days I will upload it to the Webstore and Google says you can use the Webstores autoupdating. But if I don't want to use that, will my app still update by my own server, like the way it does now?
Thanks in advance!!
I agree that docs are not very clear about this:
If you publish your extension using the Chrome Developer Dashboard,
you can ignore this page. You can use the dashboard to release updated
versions of your extension to users, as well as to the Chrome Web
Store.
But, I've tested it myself and your update_url setting in manifest.json will be overridden when you publish your extension via Chrome Web Store (CWS). In other words, publishing to CWS means that you can't use self hosted autoupdating anymore.
The reasons for that, that I could think of, may be as follows:
CWS wants to keep track of each extension stats (i.e. number of users using each extension)
privacy concerns (people don't want you to track them when they update extension)
security concerns (each extension update must go through CWS verification process)
If you want to track people (please don't) use Google Analytics on i.e. background page of your extension.