"This item has been disabled in Chrome" during latest Chrome update

[Matt Senter]

We have had a number of users report that our extension is being forcibly disabled, and it seems to be related to the most recent Chrome update 89.0.4389.72  We haven't yet been able to reproduce, but I thought I would check here in case anyone else has experienced this or there is a known issue. A quick search makes me think I might be alone, and if that is the case, are there any resources on how to make an extension survive a Chrome update? This is the first time we've ever seen this occur in nearly 3 years. We are still on manifest v2. Fortunately, the problem is easily resolved by reinstalling/re-enabling, but this can be problematic for our users. Any help is appreciated!

[馮韋元]

Hi, sorry for replying late.

The extension will always get disabled if you add new permissions to the extension, or if you add new settings in the manifest.json file such as search engine, new tab URL, etc (I don't know the exact list of those settings).

It is tricky, as Chrome won't tell the user "there are new permissions to accept, do you accept?", instead it will silently disable the extension.

The recommended approach is to add optional_permissions instead of permissions when adding new features.

// Francois