PSA: Ending support for Native Client (NaCl) on non-ChromeOS platforms

[Oliver Dunk]

Hi everyone,

In M117 (stable in September 2023), we are planning to remove Native Client support for extensions on platforms other than ChromeOS.

Native Client was a technology that allowed native code to run alongside a website or Chrome App and over the last half a decade, its functionality has been replaced with cross-browser technology like WebAssembly. Native Client deprecation was announced in 2017, including for Chrome Apps in 2020.

Based on our data, we expect this to impact only a small number of published extensions, and are already doing outreach in that small number of cases. We do not expect any wider impact.

We have added a new enterprise policy NativeClientForceAllowed that can be used through Chrome M119 to continue to allow NaCl to run. This is intended as a temporary measure if you are not able to migrate by M117.

We will remove Native Client on ChromeOS in the future but do not yet have a concrete timeline for this.

If you have any concerns, please do let us know.

Thanks,

Oliver on behalf of Chrome Extensions DevRel