Google Chrome switch to the dev channel

Posted October 24th, 2008 in Applications

A few weeks ago I posted about a Javascript date bug in Google's Chrome browser. I use Gmail with Chrome and was getting tired of the times being out by an hour so decided to try out the current dev version of Chrome to see if the bug had been fixed (and yes, it has in the dev version). This post looks at how to switch from the regular "beta" version of Google Chrome to the dev version.

This isn't recommended for ordinary users as the dev version may be less stable than the beta version. I just really wanted to try it out to see if it fixed the Javascript date bug, which it does.

The first step is to go to http://dev.chromium.org/getting-involved/dev-channel/ and download the Google Chrome Channel Chooser. Once it's downloaded, run it and you'll see a window like the one below:

Change the selection from "Beta" to "Dev", noting the warnings, and click the "Update" button. It will tell you the changes have been saved:

I then checked the "About Google Chrome" dialog (click that little spanner icon top right to find the option) and the dialog looked like this, telling me there's a newer version available:

Click the "Update Now" button to update to the latest dev channel version and it will begin to install the new version:

After it's done and you've run Google Chrome again you can check the About Google Chrome dialog again and see that's it's updated:

It shows what the current version is, but it doesn't actually show that you're using the dev or beta channel. I guess you always need to use the switcher to find out.