What you need to know
- A week after announcing the rollout of ChromeOS 119, it seems that the update has been pulled.
- There has been no indication from Google as to why this has happened.
- Currently, the only way to update your Chromebook past ChromeOS 118 is to join the Beta Channel.
It's been seven days since ChromeOS 119 was announced to be rolling out to Chromebook owners, but it seems that something is awry with the update. Both About Chromebooks and Chrome Unboxed have reported that ChromeOS 119 was pulled, and if you look at Chromium Dash, this seems to be the case.
What makes this odd isn't that Google had to pull back an update, it's that there has been no information provided as to the reason. The original announcement post on the Chromebook Community Forum is still live but has not been updated to provide any indication that this is no longer the case.
If you were one of the "lucky" ones who managed to get your Chromebook updated to ChromeOS 119, you won't be automatically forced back down to ChromeOS 118. However, if you try to upgrade to the Beta Channel with ChromeOS 120, and want to go back to the Stable Channel, you will be greeted with ChromeOS 118.
Neither About Chromebooks nor Chrome Unboxed found anything related to what bugs might be plaguing ChromeOS 119. However, there's one comment over on the r/ChromeOS subreddit stating that "It was found to cause boot failures after installing."
Doing just a general search for "ChromeOS 119" on the subreddit revealed that there are a few instances of users stating that the update either "bricked" or "required recovery." Another thread revealed that when trying to update to version 119, the update "was taking ages" and showed "some cryptic firmware screen in between."
Nevertheless, it's definitely odd to see Google just completely remove an update for ChromeOS without at least saying something. Then again, last week was a short one for many due to the holiday. Hopefully, an update as to what's going on will provided, but it's definitely looking like Google might end up skipping ChromeOS 119 and going straight to ChromeOS 120.
