Chrome Enterprise & Education FAQ

For administrators who manage Chrome browser or ChromeOS devices for a business or school.

The Chrome browser for the enterprise, sometimes referred to as Chrome Enterprise, is the same Chrome browser used by consumers. The difference is in how the browser is deployed and managed. Downloading the Chrome Enterprise Bundle, IT administrators can install the Chrome browser via MSI, and manage their organization’s Chrome browsers via group policy to enforce over 200+ policies.

Chrome supports administration features on Windows, Mac, and Linux.

For details, see Start managing Chrome browser.

To stop the hard drive from filling up on an enrolled device, the device checks once every minute and removes caches and profiles, from oldest to newest, until there is at least 2 GB of free space on the device. This behavior is not controlled by a policy setting, it automatically occurs for all enrolled devices.

Caches and profiles for currently signed-in users are not deleted. If there is only one account on the device, it’s never removed to increase available memory. If there are multiple accounts on the device, the account of the current signed-in user is never removed. Also, the signed-in user can manage disk space.

Application-specific items are deleted in parallel with ChromeOS items.

Yes, To download the latest MSI, download the Chrome Enterprise Bundle.

To download the Chrome browser for personal use, go to https://google.com/chrome/.

Google recommends you always use the latest version of Chrome. If you need to use a prior version:

1. Uninstall your current version.
2. Delete every user's saved profile data by removing the following directory:
   • Windows Vista and later: C:\Users\<user>\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data
   • Windows XP and earlier: C:\Documents and Settings\<user>\Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Chrome\User Data
     Note: You will need to have hidden folders turned on to be able to follow the entire path.
   • macOS: ~/Library/Application Support/Google/Chrome/Default
   • Linux: ~/.config/google-chrome/Default

   Warning: When you delete these directories, users permanently lose their bookmarks, browsing history, and so on.

3. Reinstall the older version.

No, older versions of the MSI are unavailable and unsupported.

The MSI only installs at the system level, so all users on the machine have access to the same instance of Chrome.

Google releases an update to the Chrome browser and ChromeOS devices approximately every 4 weeks.

We publish release notes for enterprise administrators for milestone releases of the Chrome browser. You can also follow updates on the general Chrome releases blog: https://chromereleases.googleblog.com.

Subscribe to the blog at https://chromereleases.googleblog.com to learn about security updates as soon as they are public.

Enter chrome://policy in your Chrome address bar, and you will see all the policies currently in effect on that browser or ChromeOS device.

See also View a device's current Chrome policies.

See Understand Chrome policy management.

You can enforce Chrome policies on corporate Windows computers using Windows Group Policy, Windows Registry settings, and the initial_preferences file.

For details, see Chrome browser on Windows (managed on premise).

Note: For Chrome browser 91 or later, the file named initial_preferences replaces the master_preferences file. To minimize disruption, Chrome continues to support both filenames, and any further change will be notified in the Chrome Enterprise release notes. 

Yes on corporate-managed devices. On a user's home computer, they need to sign in to Chrome using their managed Google Account, such as Google Workspace, in order for the policies to work in Chrome.

Google provides support for the latest versions of:

• Chrome browser— Stable, Extended stable, Beta, and Dev channels.
• ChromeOS— Stable, Long-term support (LTS), LTS candidate (LTC), Beta, and Dev channels, as well as the pinned OS versions currently available in the Admin console for Stable and LTS.

For details, see Chrome browser release channels and ChromeOS release best practices.

Yes, if you have a Google Workspace or a Google Workspace for Education account, or if your company purchased Chrome Enterprise Support.

You can file a bug in our public issue tracker. We recommend that you use the search fields first to look for similar bugs and see if the issue is already being resolved.

Unfortunately, we can't give exact timing on when specific issues will be fixed. You can follow the public bug to see when changes are made, when it's marked as fixed, and when it's closed.

In addition to this Chrome Enterprise Help Center, get online help at:

• Chromebook Help Center for consumers
• Chrome browser Help Center for consumers
• Public Chrome bug tracker

If your users need to access websites and applications in a legacy browser, such as those relying on ActiveX, Java, or Silverlight, deploy Legacy Browser Support to automatically switch between Chrome browser and another browser. Test your internal applications on the Beta and Dev channels of Chrome to ensure that your systems work with the upcoming stable releases of Chrome.

If you do find issues in Chrome, for example, pages crash, Chrome shows web pages differently than Safari, and so on, let us know by filing a bug.