flavors_of_chrome.md 2.4 KB

Flavors of Google Chrome for the Mac

There are various flavors of Google Chrome that are available. From the user’s perspective, there are four channels: The stable channel, the beta channel, the dev channel, and the canary channel.

However, there are two different flavors of the Beta and Dev channels. The older flavors of the Beta and Dev channels share the same bundle ID and the same user data directory location as the Stable channel, and therefore cannot be run at the same time as the Stable channel. These flavors are called “non side-by-side” or “non-SxS”, as they cannot be run side-by-side to the Stable channel of Google Chrome.

Newer flavors of the Beta and Dev channels have different bundle IDs and different data directory locations from the Stable channel, and can be run at the same time as the Stable channel. These flavors are called “side-by-side” or “SxS”.

Chrome Canary has always been side-by-side capable.

The easiest way to distinguish a side-by-side Beta or Dev Chrome from a non side-by-side one is that the side-by-side flavor has a different icon that specifies “Beta” or “Dev”. Other differences are specified in the table below.

Flavor Bundle ID Creator Code User Data Directory location
Google Chrome Stable com.google.Chrome 'rimZ' ~/Library/Application Support/Google/Chrome/
Google Chrome Beta (non-SxS) com.google.Chrome 'rimZ' ~/Library/Application Support/Google/Chrome/
Google Chrome Dev (non-SxS) com.google.Chrome 'rimZ' ~/Library/Application Support/Google/Chrome/
Google Chrome Beta (SxS) com.google.Chrome.beta 'Late' ~/Library/Application Support/Google/Chrome Beta/
Google Chrome Dev (SxS) com.google.Chrome.dev 'Prod' ~/Library/Application Support/Google/Chrome Dev/
Google Chrome Canary com.google.Chrome.canary 'Pipi' ~/Library/Application Support/Google/Chrome Canary/