Google is removing support for Chrome Apps in Kiosk mode and moving towards a more modern web-centric framework for delivering apps on ChromeOS.

The timeline from Google is detailed here, in summary:

Users running devices on the Stable Channel must migrate to the new Signagelive application by July 2026, as Google no longer supports them.

Users running devices on the LTS Channel must migrate to the new Signagelive application by April 2027, as Google no longer supports them.

We have been aware that this change is coming for a number of years and have been actively working with Google to review the new web platform technologies and provide feedback. As part of this process, we initially identified a number of web platform API and capability gaps, which Google has been working to address.

We are currently reviewing the new technology stack to confirm if we can achieve feature parity with our existing application, however currently (as of November 2024) the remaining web platform APIs and technology is still being developed and launched by Google.

To ensure an orderly transition from one app to the other, we will likely set an end-of-life date on our current application ahead of the end-of-support date for the underlying technology detailed above. We feel it is better for all to migrate to our new application rather than support two applications for a prolonged period of time.

Once the new Signagelive application is available, customers managing their ChromeOS devices via Chrome Device Management will need to plan their migrations carefully and ahead of the end-of-life date we publish.

The key consideration is that there is no migration path for the data (configuration and media content) stored on the player. This is due to ChromeOS’s security model, which sandboxes the storage for each application and is unavoidable.

Signagelive will provide a workflow to ease the migration process; however, players will be required to redownload configurations and content. As such, there will be unavoidable downtime, which will require careful planning by ChromeOS Administrators.

Google and Signagelive are actively collaborating on developing and launching new APIs for the web platform which Signagelive is incorporating into our new web app. Once the last set of web platform APIs and capabilities are launched (ETA H1 2025), Signagelive will update this page detailing: