Chrome OS 91 is now rolling out to most Chromebooks, newer models still waiting

Unlike last month’s delayed release of Chrome OS 90, version 91 of the OS looks to be rolling out swiftly following the official announcement yesteday afternoon. With Chrome OS getting regular updates every 6 weeks, the announcement from Google that a new version is available can sometimes be followed by a bit of a waiting period for different Chromebooks. Last time around, this wait was about 3 weeks for the ‘Hatch’ family of devices, and it was a bit painful. ‘Hatch’ devices make up the bulk of mid-range to high-end Chromebooks, so the users of those devices were pretty antsy to get the latest version.

This time around, however, the main three families of devices – ‘Hatch’ and ‘Octopus’ and ‘Kukui’ – are all on the receiveing end of the latest update within 24 hours of it being announced. Those three families include a huge swath of EDU and affordable Chromebooks (basically anything with an Intel Gemini Lake or MediaTek MT8183 processor) and nearly all the newer mid-range Chromebooks like the Acer Spin 713 (2020) and Galaxy Chromebook 2. From our perspective, if you are going to make sure an update gets out quickly, it should definitely be to those families of devices.

Who’s left out right now?

Notable exceptions to the update for now are the latest Tiger Lake Chromebooks like the ASUS CX5 and the new Acer Spin 713 (2021) and the newest small-core Intel Jasper Lake devices like the Acer Chromebook 713. Given the newness of these Chromebooks and the small number of users that have them in hand at this point, it’s not a huge deal and not really a surprise at all. Newer baseboards have the most potential for hiccups and issues when a new update emerges, so it always stands to reason that the first few OS updates for a given family of devices might be a bit delayed.

All in all, we’re happy to see Chrome OS 91 and it’s awesome Nearby Sharing feature already rolling out to so many Chromebooks across the board. If you’d like to keep tabs on what devices and baseboards are getting the update, simply head over to the Chrome OS Updates site. It pulls from the server that is responsible for pushing updates to devices, so it is generally spot-on at giving you up-to-date info on the latest releases and what devices should have them. We’ll be keeping an eye out for Tiger Lake and Jasper Lake devices to get Chrome OS 91 and we’ll be sure to update when we see it happening.