I saw a security notice on Facebook this morning that said I need to force an update to my Google Chrome browser immediately. How can I do that on a Mac system?
As our Web browsers have been front and center to our online lives, it’s no surprise that the browsers themselves have become huge, super complicated applications. From movie viewing to email, live chat to interactive games, a Web browser is responsible for a lot more than just showing you pictures and text as it did in the old days. Ya know, like just a few years ago. 🙂
Google Chrome is one of the more sophisticated [read “complex”] Web browsers available and so it’s not a big surprise that it occasionally has a security issue or two pop up. Standard solution is always to upgrade, and with modern software, ensuring everything’s upgraded is a smart strategy anyway. Even your TV, Wi-Fi router and Blu-Ray player, now that we’re talking about it!
Fortunately Google Chrome is also really easy to update and it’s just about automatic if you quit and restart occasionally. Most people seem to run their browser for weeks without a restart, however, which ends up being a bit problematic. But let’s just start in the browser itself… You want to simply look for the version ID of the browser, like this:
Once you choose “About Google Chrome” it’ll basically do all the work. In fact, it immediately checks to compare the current version with the latest public distribution:
See where it says “Updating Google Chrome”? That means it’s already checked versions and identified that there’s a newer version than 66.0.3359.181. And yeah, not the most friendly of version numbers, is it?
Stay on this screen, though. After a few moments it’ll change to this:
Here’s the challenge, of course: If you never restart, Chrome might well already have the latest update queued and ready to go. But you have to relaunch. Don’t worry, it’s the one time that every single tab will reopen exactly where it was, so just do it, click on “RELAUNCH“.
After a minute or two, it should restart and show you this if you check “About Google Chrome”:
For now, at least, the latest version is 67.0.3396.79. And that’s what I’m running, and hopefully you too!