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flim
Asked: 2024-11-13 23:30:22 +0800 CST

Google Chrome says "Chrome is out of date" but apt says "google-chrome-stable is already the newest version"

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This has been happening for a good few months, but it's definitely a change in behaviour in the past year. Every time a new version of Chrome comes out, I get a message in Chrome to say the update has failed and I should restart the browser to install the update. Restarting makes no difference, of course.

sudo apt install google-chrome-stable returns "google-chrome-stable is already the newest version"

apt show google-chrome-stable shows the same version number as Chrome does, confirming it's the version apt thinks it is.

These all show my installed (and apparently up to date) version as v129.whatever but the current stable release according to Google is v131.whatever. Does it just take ages from Google releasing a new version to it appearing in the repository, or is something broken? If it does just take time, is there a way to disable the message popping up in Chrome all the time to say it's out of date?

It's only a minor annoyance, as I use Opera for most things, but still use Chrome for some websites that "don't support" Opera.

Opera updates just fine, and I noticed today that Chromium updated via Discover, so it does seem to be peculiar to Chrome.

I'm using Kubuntu 24.10, but the behaviour is unchanged from 24.04 at least.

Edit 1: The suggested similar question is one I looked at prior to posting this one. The marked answer to that one says apt show google-chrome-stable doesn't find any results, suggesting it was not installed from the repository. Mine does show an output with version number and maintainer info, so presumably isn't the same problem.

That said, apt show does show Apt-Manual-Installed: yes so could this be the issue? If so, how do I install it properly so the package manager keeps it updated?

Edit 2: Looking at other posts/answers, I've recalled how I have been installing/updating. Each time I get this alert, I go to the Chrome download site, download the latest x64 .deb package and install it with sudo dpkg -i ~/Downloads/google-chrome-stable_current_amd64.deb

This presumably explains the manual install flag from apt show but I'm led to believe this should also automagically add the Google repository for updates. Is there a way I can check that part has worked?

Edit 3: Output from sudo apt update seemingly showing no Google repos:

flim@flim:~$ sudo apt update
[sudo] password for flim:
Hit:1 http://gb.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu oracular InRelease
Hit:2 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu oracular InRelease
Get:3 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu oracular-updates InRelease [126 kB]
Get:4 http://gb.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu oracular-updates InRelease [126 kB]
Hit:5 http://gb.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu oracular-backports InRelease
Get:6 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu oracular-updates/main amd64 Packages [62.7 kB]
Get:7 http://gb.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu oracular-updates/main amd64 Packages [62.7 kB]
Get:8 http://gb.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu oracular-updates/universe amd64 Packages [28.1 kB]
Hit:9 http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu oracular-security InRelease
Fetched 406 kB in 6s (65.9 kB/s)
4 packages can be upgraded. Run 'apt list --upgradable' to see them.
flim@flim:~$
google-chrome

2 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    Thanks to everyone who commented, and particularly user535733 for their input (feel free to add an answer and I'll happily mark it as the winner).

    I had installed Google Chrome from the .deb package available from Google's Chrome download site and then using the command sudo dpkg -i ~/Downloads/google-chrome-stable_current_amd64.deb which was the default download location for me (yours will likely be somewhere else).

    Reviewing the contents of that package, it is supposed to add the repository as part of the post-installation tasks (postinst in the package) but, for whatever reason, that had not worked on my system. As such, I had to manually add the repository. To do so, I used the following commands, starting with adding the PSK:

    wget -q -O - https://dl-ssl.google.com/linux/linux_signing_key.pub | sudo apt-key add -

    I did receive a message that apt-key add is no longer supported, but it appears to have worked. I then needed to add the actual repo:

    sudo sh -c 'echo "deb [arch=amd64] http://dl.google.com/linux/chrome/deb/ stable main" >> /etc/apt/sources.list.d/google.list'

    Initially, the instructions I followed did not include the [arch=amd64] bit, so I actually had to redo that step.

    sudo apt update now shows the Chrome repo and I am able to upgrade using either sudo apt upgrade or via KDE Discover.

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  2. I cannot reply to your answer but you should consider to use the new mechanism instead of relying on apt-key. The problem with apt-key is that basically all keys are put in a global store and as long as one of the keys matches for any of your repositories, it is considered valid. This poses a security risk, as a compromised key could potentially lead to untrusted packages being installed.

    Nowadays the keys are put to separate files and for each repository only a specific key file is used.

    wget -q -O - https://dl.google.com/linux/linux_signing_key.pub | gpg --dearmor | sudo tee /etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/google.gpg >/dev/null

    sudo sh -c 'echo "deb [arch=amd64,signed-by=/etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/google.gpg] http://dl.google.com/linux/chrome/deb/ stable main" > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/google.list'
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