PSA: Support for Android Lollipop is deprecated in the Chromium code base*

1,078 views

Skip to first unread message

Tommy Nyquist

unread,

Nov 1, 2021, 1:02:12 PM11/1/21

to chromium-dev

Hi, fellow developers!

What?

We have deprecated support for Android Lollipop (API level 21 and 22) in the Chromium code base. The minimum version supported going forward is Android Marshmallow (6.0), API level 23.

* Regarding cronet: The parts of the code base that affect cronet still need to support older versions of Android (supported cronet builders listed here).

Why?

Lollipop was last updated in 2015 and is used by less than 4.34% of active Android Chrome users. Only ~14% of those users are running an updated version of Chrome, so around 0.60% of our users will be impacted when we stop updating Chrome on Android devices running Lollipop. This decline in usage can be seen across the Android platform as well as in Chrome and WebView usage.

We value our users and want to keep them safe on the web, but maintaining Chrome on operating system versions that are no longer supported reduces our ability to move the rest of Chrome forward. As other apps have done, we have decided to end support for Lollipop now that 6 years have passed since its final update.

When?

This is happening now. Chrome M95 is the last release that will support Android Lollipop. M96 has already branched and will not be shipped to Lollipop.

For cleanup CLs related to this, you can either use this meta bug: https://crbug.com/1265456, or file blocking bugs.

The Chrome team at Google

Takashi Toyoshima

unread,

Nov 3, 2021, 11:06:43 PM11/3/21

to nyq...@chromium.org, midi...@chromium.org, chromium-dev

Good to know.

Web MIDI has a fallback backend to use USB API in case MIDI API isn't provided by Android on L-.

But now we can expect all supporting Android provides the MIDI API that was introduced at M.

I'll have a plan to remove the USB based Web MIDI backend.

Filed: crbug.com/1266674

--
--
Chromium Developers mailing list: chromi...@chromium.org
View archives, change email options, or unsubscribe:
http://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/group/chromium-dev
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Chromium-dev" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to chromium-dev...@chromium.org.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/d/msgid/chromium-dev/CAA6XDjPkqAsiF6nVL3SDimm2tjZQJcDgHc3mqSHiBLg2XS5vHg%40mail.gmail.com.