Google sets timeline for phasing out support for Chrome Apps across all operating systems by July 2022; the change won't affect Chrome extensions
Back in 2016, Google announced that it was killing Chrome Apps in favor of the web. This process began with that category disappearing …
Context & Ripple Effects
This is the final chapter of a retirement Google began in 2016, when it first said it would end Chrome Apps support on Windows, Mac, and Linux in early 2018 and stop surfacing them in the Chrome Web Store. By late 2017 it had shut down the store's app section and emailed developers that Chrome Apps were deprecated, though they survived on Chrome OS — which is why today's all-OS deadline matters: it closes the last refuge.
The timing also lands one day after Google committed to phasing out third-party cookies in Chrome within two years, making this a coordinated week of pruning legacy Chrome surfaces in favor of the open web.
First-order effects
- Developers still shipping Chrome Apps — particularly on Chrome OS, where support persisted after the desktop deprecation — now have a hard July 2022 date to migrate to web-based equivalents.
Second-order effects
- Chrome extension developers get explicit continuity: with extensions carved out of the phase-out, the extension ecosystem becomes the surviving packaged-software layer inside Chrome rather than competing with apps.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, Google keeps converting Chrome from a multi-runtime platform into a web-only one, and developers building on proprietary browser surfaces face recurring sunset risk — the same dynamic playing out with cookies.
The trend: Browser vendors are consolidating on the open web as the only application runtime, using long, pre-announced sunset timelines to retire every proprietary layer in between.