How to limit extensions to a specific Chrome version

You might want to use modern browser APIs in your extensions and completely ignore users that are running on outdated browser versions. It may seem that everyone gets the latest version of Chrome the same day since Chrome updates automatically. Reality is that users ignore Chrome updates and it’s even worse in organizations where browser updates may be blocked by IT policy.

The most user friendly way of handling a missing API is to implement feature detection and nudge users to update their browser. But this requires extra effort from your side. Chrome extension manifest has a lesser known minimum_chrome_version parameter that helps to solve this problem in one line of JSON.

Declaring a minimum chrome version will prevent users with outdated browsers from installing your extension. It will also prevent users from getting an extension update if they are already using your extension. This way you can gracefully sunset your old version of the extension without breaking the existing users that can’t update their browsers for whatever reason.

{
    "minimum_chrome_version": "89.0.4389.82"
}