Chrome Canary

Why Trust Techopedia

What Does Chrome Canary Mean?

Chrome Canary is the less stable version of the Google Chrome operating system. Canary has cutting edge features compared to the developer’s build. These features are tested thoroughly before being pushed into beta build. Canary gives the user the useful option of running the advanced version of Chrome without fully committing to alpha testing.

Advertisements

One of the primary reasons for introducing the Chrome canary is to speed up Chrome’s development cycle. With help of public, Google can test new features and collect user feedback and statistics more quickly and easily. The test results that are derived from users help the Chrome team to resolve issues in the software more quickly and roll it out to all Chrome users.

Techopedia Explains Chrome Canary

Chrome Canary has the following basic characteristics:

  1. It is based on the principle of a canary in a coal mine; if something kills Canary, the changes are blocked.
  2. It is relatively less stable than the developer’s build.
  3. It contains new features. If these are not found to be beneficial for users, they are blocked from the developer build.
  4. Canary can run alongside the existing version of Chrome.
  5. Canary has a different colored icon. The browser skin is blue with a yellow icon.
  6. Canary cannot be set as the default browser; it is just a secondary installation of Chrome.
  7. Automated updates occur with high frequency.
  8. Canary provides support for multiple user profiles.
Advertisements

Related Terms

Margaret Rouse
Technology expert
Margaret Rouse
Technology expert

Margaret is an award-winning writer and educator known for her ability to explain complex technical topics to a non-technical business audience. Over the past twenty years, her IT definitions have been published by Que in an encyclopedia of technology terms and cited in articles in the New York Times, Time Magazine, USA Today, ZDNet, PC Magazine, and Discovery Magazine. She joined Techopedia in 2011. Margaret’s idea of ​​a fun day is to help IT and business professionals to learn to speak each other’s highly specialized languages.