When the Google Chrome version reaches 100, do the websites break or work properly like now? Google to check this on Chrome 96-99 versions by replacing the version number in the User-Agent string with a three-digit number, hundred.
User-Agent is still a thing
Google Chrome is used by millions around the world and is the number one web browser. Most developers ensure their websites and apps run smoothly in Chrome.
Whenever a user visits a website, the browser sends an HTTP header including User-Agent to the web server to serve the appropriate version.
UA reveals the user’s browser, Operating system, and other device details. These are there for compatibility reasons but are now used to fingerprinting users.
In layman terms, here is what User Agent is: Chrome says this to websites you visit: “Hi, I am Chrome on Windows”.
Google Chrome version 100
With Firefox, Chrome, Microsoft Edge browsers to hit the century in 2022, browser vendors started worrying does this affects the way websites run in their browsers.
Concerned by this, Mozilla is running a UA string experiment, prior to this test on the Nightly population, Mozilla employee, Chris Peterson overrode Firefox UA String with version 100 and found no issues in accessing websites (except Slack, its message menu was broken) for four months.
After Mozilla, Google now is forcing the user agent in Chrome 96-99 versions to100 and see if it causes any issues.
According to Chrome and Firefox release schedules,
- Chrome 100 stable releases on March 29. 2022
- and Firefox 100 lands in Nightly on March 07, 2022
So, it’s clear, Chrome hits 100 first and it could encounter websites compatibility issues if any than Firefox.
‘Chrome/100.0’ UA Test
To become part of this test by Google
- Launch Chrome Canary
- Visit chrome://flags
- Search for “user agent”, in the dropdown for “Force major version to 100 in User-Agent” select Enabled and restart the browser.
With this flag turned on, Chrome sets version 96, 97, 98, or 99’s UA as 100.
Then, technically Chrome runs at version 100 though the actual version is 96 or <=99 and the browser sends the following user agent information to websites you connect to.
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/100.0.4650.4 Safari/537.36
You can check Chrome User Agent on the chrome://version page
If you come across any website issue in Chrome, file a bug and let Google know.
On the other hand, the tech giant is working to curtail information in user agent String.
Note: Chrome freeze User-agent flag has been renamed to “Reduce User-Agent header”.
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