Force Autoupdate Chrome using Command/Script

[Tejas Shah]

Hi,

I was trying to look for ways to auto update Chrome forcefully on windows. Is there any command/script that I can use to force this update ? Any registry settings that can force this ?

Any pointers to help would be appreciated.

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Thanks,
Tejas

[Greg Thompson]

Why do you ask?  Chrome on Windows is kept up to date by Google Update (http://code.google.com/p/omaha/).  You can manually run Google Update's UA ("update apps") task via the Windows Task Scheduler if you really want to.  There are a number of (good) reasons why it might not update when you think it maybe ought to, though.  You can also visit Chrome's "About Google Chrome" item from the wrench menu to check for updates.

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[Anthony LaForge]

The standard way to force an update, if one exists, is to go to "Wrench Menu"->"About Chrome".

Kind Regards,

Anthony Laforge
Technical Program Manager
Mountain View, CA

[Tejas Shah]

@Greg - Good question. We are trying to install latest Chrome channels on Windows Machines before kicking off automated test runs. In order to do that we need an installer script  for Chrome Channels. After talking to Omaha (Installer) team, it looks like they don't have any straight forward way to do this. So what we are doing instead is to have an image of Windows with Chrome channels installed. So we just have to update the Channel everytime we start a machine to ensure we have latest build from that channel. If you or anyone knows a better way to install a Chrome Channel programmatic-ally than let me know and we can use that approach. BTW, we don't have access to Chrome Builds, as this is running in cloud outside the corp/prod.

@Anthony - We are aware of this wrench menu based approach. We just want to avoid driving UX (if we can) from script.

Thanks,

Tejas

[Greg Thompson]

I think using schtasks /run to fire off Google Update's UA task may do the trick for you.

[Kevin Pereksta]

In case anyone else finds this and needs an answer, the Scheduled Task runs the following daily:

X:\Program Files (x86)\Google\Update\GoogleUpdate.exe /ua /installsource scheduler

[Morris Maynard]

"Chrome on Windows is kept up to date by Google Update" if only that were true. Every time I go to Help...About Chrome is at least one or two versions behind the latest.

[Jakob Kummerow]

Just to clarify: which version are you on right now?

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[Greg Thompson]

It is often the case that you will find that your machine has not yet received an update shortly after Google publishes a new stable build. This is because we push updates gradually over several days for a variety of reasons. If you visit chrome://help and you see that an update is downloaded and installed, then Google Update is working. This simply means that your machine hadn't yet picked up the update via the automatic tasks.

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[Robert Brewster]

Is there a way to force the update behaviour? My company has software that checks software versions and can deny access to (needed) resources if something is seen as out of date. Chrome frequently flags as out of date, requiring me to update via the GUI and relaunch which is quite a hassle. We'd really like to be able to make sure Chrome is updated in a startup script/schedule so end-users aren't constantly required to manually update and relaunch.

[Jakob Kummerow]

Does the information linked from https://support.google.com/chrome/a/answer/9049675?hl=en help?

[Greg Thompson]

Are your users impacted because they simply haven't restarted Chrome recently (i.e., the browser's app menu has the update arrow)? If this is the case, you may find the RelaunchNotification policy interesting (https://support.google.com/chrome/a/answer/7679871). This policy allows you to either encourage or force a browser restart after an update has been applied.

On Wed, Jan 22, 2020 at 6:18 PM Robert Brewster <rbrews...@gmail.com> wrote:

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[Morris Maynard]

This reply, as do previous ones, misses the point. The networks monitoring will detect that chromium is out of date. It will continue to detect and report this, and these reports are an issue because it clogs up our system and obscures things that might be more serious issues. What is needed is a mechanism for updating chromium without the user having to launch the browser at all.

[Greg Thompson]

For Windows computers that are powered on and are online, Google Update will update installations where Chrome is not running. No user action is needed.

Could you explain a bit more what signals the monitoring is reporting? How is it determining Chrome's version, and what is it comparing this to to determine that Chrome is out of date?

Note that if Chrome is running when an update is applied, a browser restart is required. Users failing to restart in a timely fashion is a common source of administrator frustration. This is the scenario that the policies I mentioned previously address.