surprise! Google Chrome now natively on Windows on Arm

Google appears to be preparing a version of its popular Chrome browser for Windows on Arm. X (former Twitter) user Pedro Justo We’ve discovered that the latest nightly build of Chrome includes a native version of the browser for Windows 11 Arm-powered devices. .

It was a surprise that Google released a version of Chrome Canary for Windows on Arm, and we reached out to the company to clarify when they plan to bring this to the stable channel. I installed and tested the canary version and confirmed it was the ARM64 version.

Microsoft has long supported the Arm version of its Edge browser, which is also based on Chromium, but until this week, Google had shown no signs of supporting Windows on Arm. Therefore, Windows devices with Qualcomm’s latest Snapdragon chips must run Chrome in an emulated state, resulting in slower performance.

There’s a big difference between the Edge ARM64 version and the regular x86 version of Chrome running on Windows on Arm. The native version of Edge on Arm devices feels just like any other Intel machine, but there are noticeable slowdowns and performance issues with Chrome on Windows on Arm.

Google has long supported Arm processors in Chromebooks and offers a version of ChromeOS optimized for Qualcomm chips. Microsoft was able to ship its own ARM64 version of Edge because it leveraged the basics of Chromium to build a new browser without Google’s Widevine digital rights management (DRM) system. Other browser vendors using Chromium as well. Obsessed with Google’s DRM So Edge is effectively the only native Arm browser option on Windows.