Google Chrome is coming to Windows 11 devices running on ARM processors. A new version of the browser has been released via the Canary release channel that will allow users with ARM-based devices to run Chrome natively, rather than having to use an emulator (which brings its own complexities and issues of performance).
ARM-based mobile devices are already very common, and ARM processors and ARM-based chips (such as Apple's M1, M2, and M3 silicon chips) are becoming more common in devices like PCs. Unfortunately, those running Windows on a device with an ARM chip cannot use Chrome natively and would have to use a workaround such as running Chrome in emulation mode.
This isn't the end of the world, but if you're emulating a virtual device inside your device, you're relying on the processing limitations of the virtual device. This limited Chrome's performance on ARM-64 processor devices, until now, thanks to the latest build on the Canary channel, which is for very early and potentially unstable versions of Google Chrome, and which users can download and try at their own discretion. discretion.
Chromium, an open source web browser project primarily developed and maintained by Google, has supported the ARM-64 architecture for many years. Oddly enough, Google Chrome itself (which is based on Chromium) has been available for most ARM-oriented operating systems except Windows. It's unclear why it's taken Google Chrome so long to support Windows on ARM-based computers. Google has two operating systems designed to run on ARM hardware (Android for mobile devices and ChromeOS for Chromebooks) and Windows on ARM is a direct competitor, which could be a (rather cynical) reason.
MSPowerUser investigated for himself whether this Canary version actually worked on a machine with an ARM processor running a recent version of Windows 11 and found that it worked on at least one of those devices that had an older Snapdragon 835 SoC processor.
What to consider before downloading and installing
It's worth remembering that even if you have an ARM-based Windows 11 device, this is a Canary channel build that you should consider carefully before downloading and installing. It is prone to instability and is specifically intended to be Google's first round of external testing for Chrome. It will probably come down through slightly less frequent, but more proven and stable release channels. If you have an ARM-based Windows 11 device and are neither a tester nor a developer, it's probably worth waiting for one of these later versions.
This release is not far from the upcoming debut of Qualcomm's Snapdragon on Apple's ARM.
With more devices on offer with ARM processors running Windows, we could see ARM processors continue to play an important role in PCs and laptops, and challenge the dominance of Intel and AMD. Google extending Google Chrome support to these devices could help make this happen, and I bet other processor manufacturers (cough, Intel) are paying attention.
