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