I’m having fun with Google Chrome but am wondering: how the heck do you get an update to it when there’s a new version? Do you just wait until the social networks are abuzz, or does the program automatically check?
Answer:(By Dave)
Your timing is splendid! As it happens, Google just this evening released an update to its barnstorming Google Chrome web browser and so I expect a lot of people will have this same question. With Windows you know that it automagically updates (assuming you have autoupdate turned on) but what about individual Windows applications?
A bit of digging reveals how this works in Chrome: the update subsystem is displayed as part of the About Google Chrome window, including an indication that there’s a new version – if there is – and how to get it.
First, of course, like with anything else to do with Chrome, you have to figure out how to get there!
To find the “About Google Chrome” box, you need to click on the little wrench icon:
Then you probably would never notice this, but it actually checks for a new version back at Google central when this window launches. This time I caught it in the act:
A few moments later, the bottom portion changes to tell me what’s going on:
Do I want to update? Uh, yeah! I click on “Update Now” and…
It took me a few minutes before it had finished downloading the new version of Google Chrome, but once it did, finally, I saw this:
I quit and restarted the browser, and now when I go to the About Google Chrome window, you’ll notice the version and release numbers are updated:
Now I did this manually. I would be surprised if the browser didn’t automatically check when you launched it next, so you can probably just ignore the update until it tells you to check it out. But if you’re impatient or want to gain more control over the process, well, now you know how to do so!
