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When I push a new version of a Chrome extension to the Chrome Web Store, how long will it take for the updated version to reach current users?

I pushed an update about six hours ago, but the extension hasn't updated for me yet. The Chrome docs are unclear.

Joe Mornin
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  • Do you see the new version on the chrome webstore? If you do an "update extensions now" should get you the new version. – source.rar Jun 07 '14 at 18:53
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    If your question is why it is not auto updating. This typically happens once in several hours. The precise frequency is unknown as mentioned in https://developer.chrome.com/extensions/autoupdate. And in practice I've actually had to restart to see it update or ended up updating them manually. – source.rar Jun 07 '14 at 19:13
  • The new version appears in the store. I'm curious how long it takes for users to receive the update, since most users won't manually update their extensions. – Joe Mornin Jun 09 '14 at 14:38
  • From my experience it always updates eventually (probably on a restart of the browser at a point after the new version is available on the webstore). But I don't know of a minimum number of hours it takes to do so if that's what you're asking – source.rar Jun 09 '14 at 14:41
  • This question appears to be off-topic because it is about 3rd party publication cycles. – Flexo Oct 19 '14 at 05:27

2 Answers2

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Currently this defaults to 5 hours (based on the code here).

You can override this by launching chrome with the extensions-update-frequency command-line parameter, which is the frequency in seconds. And you can go to chrome://extensions, tick the Developer mode checkbox at the top right, then press the Update Extensions Now button

Chrome docs doesn't specify this 5 hour value though, so it could change in future versions without notice:

Every few hours, the browser checks whether any installed extensions or apps have an update URL. For each one, it makes a request to that URL looking for an update manifest XML file.

rewolf
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Rory
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    The 'Update extensions now' is only there for users who have checked the 'Developer mode' checkbox – Jacob Oscarson Jan 27 '16 at 11:04
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    Thanks @JacobOscarson, I've updated answer. – Rory Jan 27 '16 at 12:30
  • Looks like this link doesn't wok anymore. But here is [updated link](https://cs.chromium.org/chromium/src/extensions/common/constants.cc?q=kDefaultUpdateFrequencySeconds&dr=CSs&l=45). It is still 5 hours. – Denis L Apr 11 '17 at 11:01
  • Thanks @Deliaz I've updated link. – Rory Apr 11 '17 at 22:44
  • @AntonKattsyn note comment from rogerdpack. – Rory Apr 11 '17 at 22:44
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    @rogerdpack The docs you linked to also say "If no handlers are listening for this event, and your extension has a persistent background page, it behaves as if chrome.runtime.reload() is called in response to this event." – Sebastian Kreft Oct 19 '18 at 18:45
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    @SebastianKreft OK that makes more sense. ref: http://developer.chrome.com/extensions/runtime#event-onUpdateAvailable Note that it can another 60 minutes to "actually really hit the chrome store" after publishing. A bit scary that it will auto-kill the background.js by default but guess it has to do something :) – rogerdpack Oct 20 '18 at 00:30
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Restarting the browser and OS didn't help. Eventually, the extension updated itself, but it took at least 48 hours.

Joe Mornin
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    This is not an answer to the stated question, even if you accept it as such. – Xan Jun 12 '14 at 10:29
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    The question was: "how long will it take for the updated version to reach current users?" The answer was: "at least 48 hours." If you can provide a better answer, I'd accept that instead. – Joe Mornin Jun 12 '14 at 14:19
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    The better answer was provided, you can accept it now. – Ludwik Trammer Dec 15 '14 at 22:20
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    Done. (It wasn't there when I wrote this answer.) – Joe Mornin Dec 23 '14 at 21:15
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    Even if this doesn't answer the question, I can see that you're the one who wrote the question, and I've been wondering the same. Now we know an upper-bound for autoupdate is at least 2 days. Thank you, this is useful for me. – nc. Mar 01 '16 at 08:43