Google introduces Chrome Canary builds

Updated on 04-Aug-2010

Google has opened up a whole new channel for Google Chrome builds which they plan to keep updated even more frequently than their Dev channel. These build which Google are calling the “Canary” builds will introduce riskier changes and will not undergo any manual testing. The name of the build and the post introducing them refer to the usage of canaries as test for poisonous gases in mines, before humans would descend. So yes, in this case, you the user are the canary.

For those who didn’t know, Google Chrome already has three “channels” Google Chrome releases, each of which release at different frequencies and receive different amounts of testing. The dev channel builds are released each week with the latest changes, the beta channel on the other hand gets monthly releases of Google Chrome builds which are stable enough to be beta. Finally when a beta channel build is stable enough it makes it to the stable release which is what most people use.

Google Chrome canary build will let Google feedback even earlier than a week. To emphasize its unstable nature Google Chrome Canary build install in parallel to your main Google Chrome installation and the browser cannot be set as default. Even the Chrome icon for this build has a canary-ish look.

If you like living on the edge and would like to help test Google Chrome feature before anyone else does, download the Canary build from here.

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