This won’t appease all of the folks who won’t purchase Chromebooks due to automatic update expiration (AUE) dates, but for everyone else, there’s good news: Google has extended Chrome OS update support from between six months to two years on 135 devices. Android Police was the first to report the news, although I was tipped by one of our readers during my all-day classes on campus yesterday.
I alluded to this extension happening a few weeks back when speaking to Google’s Ben Janofsky, Senior Product Manager in Google’s hardware division.
He had told me that some devices – the Pixel Slate and Pixelbook Go, for example – could see up Chrome OS software updates for up to two years longer. At that time that wasn’t official as Google was still deciding on the extension period.
Now that it has, the Pixel Slate I bought last year did get a whopping two-year software update extension, from June 2024 to June 2026. The Pixelbook Go, which is a great device for most people, has the same June 2026 date. And the Chromebook Pixel 2015 also gains a year, with updates now coming through June 2021.
But it’s not just Made By Google devices that get the extension.
The ol’ Samsung Chromebook 3 gets another year of updates, through June 2022. The highly popular Asus Chromebook Flip C302 eked out another six months of updates, now through June 2023. And there are plenty more: All of the new dates are officially available on Google’s support page for AUE.
Keep in mind that once your Chromebook hits end-of-life, it’s not really dead. It won’t receive Chrome OS updates beyond the AUE date but it will work just as it always did, although any security concerns beyond that could be an issue. And there are a few other options to securely get more life out of that Chromebook, which I’ve outlined here.
