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What could make Chrome remove an extension automatically?

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Thien Hoang

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Jan 7, 2025, 11:13:05 AMJan 7
to Chromium Extensions
Hi all,

I'm developing an enterprise extension (self-hosted) and for some reason Chrome repeatedly removed it from the users, even after reinstall. It happens randomly throughout the day, with random people.

The exported policies from chrome://policies show that:
- The extension is under "ExtensionInstallAllowlist"
- The extension's installation source is under "ExtensionInstallSources"
- "ExtensionManifestV2Availability" is 2, as the extension is still using Manifest V2

Do you know any other factors that can lead to a removal?

Not sure if it's relevant, but the `update_url` in the extension manifest is not publicly accessible. I wonder if Chrome would periodically check this and fail and decide to remove the extension.

Any leads would be greatly appreciated!

Best,
Thien

Thien Hoang

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Jan 15, 2025, 6:54:50 AMJan 15
to Chromium Extensions, Thien Hoang
Turned out, the issue is due to a registry-update-mechanism we had, in which we cleared the ExtensionInstallForcelist before reapplying it. Sometimes Chrome decided to randomly refresh policies after the force-list is cleared, therefore the extension got removed (a documented behavior), but it did not refresh the policies after the list was restored, therefore the extension didn't come back.
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