Google announced this week that they would be retiring their “Chrome App Launcher” on Windows, Mac and Linux, and naturally people who had no idea what this meant, proceeded to freak out that Chrome is leaving their lives.
Relax peoples, Google Chrome isn’t going anywhere.
Chances are these people have never used the Chrome App Launcher. Let’s focus on what that is first:
Google Chrome allows you to put “Add-Ons” into Chrome.
This includes things like games (2048) and productivity apps (Keep, Drive).
When these add-ons are used in Chrome, they simply opened up in a new browser tab.
But with the Chrome App Launcher it would place links to these apps on your desktop, and when opened, they’d launch as standalone programs, kind of like regular Windows/Mac/Linux programs.
So all Google is doing with this move is removing the program quick launches from your computer, and limiting that sort of thing on any operating system other than Chromebooks.
But it doesn’t change the typical Google Chrome workflow in any way, and those who do use these add-ons can still use them within Chrome.
So worry not Google Chrome users, keep using the best browser out there (for now) and maybe start looking into the add-ons?
Aviously 