Google Chrome will stop supporting macOS 11 Big Sur

Google Chrome has always maintained a plan to periodically drop support for older operating systems, presumably because the development costs no longer justify the shrinking user base. Last month, we learned that Chrome 139 would drop support for two older versions of Android, Android 8.0 Oreo and Android 9.0 Pie. Now, it looks like this Chrome release will also drop support for macOS 11.

According to the content posted on the Chrome Platform Status page, Chrome 138 will be the last browser version to support macOS 11.0. This operating system, called Big Sur, was released by Apple in June 2020, and deployed globally in November of the same year. The successor to macOS 11 Big Sur is macOS 12 Monterey, released in 2021. Apple itself has also ended support for macOS 11 Big Sur in November 2023.

In the release notes for Chrome 139 (due out July 30), Google notes that Apple itself has ended support for Big Sur, so Chrome has effectively been supporting the operating system for nearly two more years. The company makes it clear that Chrome will still work fine on macOS 11 Big Sur, but it won't get any new updates, security patches, or features in the future.

Notably, Chrome 139 now requires at least macOS 12 Monterey, which ended support nearly a year ago. Regardless, it's important that users are running an operating system that's supported by their vendor. Currently supported macOS versions include: macOS 13 Ventura, macOS 14 Sonoma, and macOS 15 Sequoia.