Chrome Extension gradual rollout / feature flags

[Oscar Lima]

Hello,

I have a Chrome extension that functions as a softphone, currently used by around 5,000 users. I would like to deploy new features gradually to different user groups instead of rolling them out to everyone at once.

Since my extension uses Manifest V3, I cannot use remotely hosted code, which would have made implementing feature flags easier. Given this restriction:

1. Is there a way to perform a controlled or staged rollout through the Chrome Web Store?
2. How can I implement feature flags without having all feature variations baked into the extension's code (i.e., fetching feature configurations remotely while complying with MV3)?

Any guidance or best practices would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

[Oliver Dunk]

Hi Oscar,

Is there a way to perform a controlled or staged rollout through the Chrome Web Store?

For extensions with more than 10,000 users, we do have a percentage rollout feature: https://developer.chrome.com/docs/extensions/develop/migrate/publish-mv3#gradual-rollout. Unfortunately, it sounds like you don't quite qualify for this at the moment. The restriction is not one we would choose to have but is because the way this is implemented (using an updater shared by many parts of Chrome) only works once there is a large enough group of users.

How can I implement feature flags without having all feature variations baked into the extension's code (i.e., fetching feature configurations remotely while complying with MV3)?

Fetching configuration data, like the experiments to enable, is completely fine. However, the implementations for each individual feature do need to be included in the bundle.

Patrick has a video with some more details here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aYxzHUX_elo 

Oliver Dunk | DevRel, Chrome Extensions | https://developer.chrome.com/ | London, GB

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