Google Chrome Canary For Mac Takes Flight

Google has released a Mac version of its Chrome Canary browser build, arriving nine months after the Canary for Windows release.

Canary is the pre-Dev build of Chrome, and sits somewhere between being too unstable and being a developer build. It is meant for intrepid users who enjoy testing bleeding edge technology and don’t mind a few bugs. Most users run it alongside a more stable build of Chrome, to provide backup at times when Canary is unusable.

“When we released Google Chrome Canary for Windows last year to help get more feedback on crashes from the bravest Chrome users, we weren’t sure how many people would tolerate using a completely untested build of Chrome,” said Google software engineer Mark Mentovai in a blog post.

“Since then, hundreds of thousands of Windows users have contributed to Chrome’s development by using the Canary and sending us valuable feedback. Thanks!”

No manual testing

Mentovai explained that the Mac version of Google Chrome Canary follows the same philosophy as the Windows version: it automatically updates more frequently than the Dev channel, and does not undergo any manual testing before each release.

“Because we expect it to be unstable and, at times, unusable, you can run it concurrently with a Dev, Beta, or Stable version of Google Chrome. Your Canary data remains separate, but if you set up Sync in each version of Chrome that you use, you can automatically continue using the same set of bookmarks, extensions, themes, and more,” he said.

The Mac build comes as Chrome is making incremental gains against browser incumbents Microsoft Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox and Apple Safari. Research from Net Applications earlier this yeat revealed that Google’s Chrome web browser nudged up to 10.9 percent through February. This was a modest rise from its January position of 10.7 percent market share.

Following the launch of Canary for Windows in August 2010, Chrome Product Manager Henry Bridge described the Canary build as a sort of a stop-gap to keep Chrome from losing momentum. He noted that the Chrome team already releases a developer build almost weekly, but that Chrome development misses a beat when it migrates a developer channel release to the beta channel.

Chrome 11 on the way

Last month Google revealed that it had paid $16,500 (£9,900) to developers for plugging 27 vulnerabilities in its primary Chrome web browser.

The move paves the way for the launch of the Chrome 11, which launched to the stable channel for Windows, Mac and Linux on 27 April, and includes such perks as speech input translation.

Google pays the bug hunters through its Chromium Security Rewards program, a crowdsourced approach to letting developers earn money by helping Google squash bugs in Chrome.