Considering everything, Google is preparing a special version of its Chrome browser for the Windows on Arm platform. User X (formerly Twitter) Pedro Husto noticed a native version of the browser for Arm devices with Windows 11 in the latest Chrome builds in the Canary channel.
The release of the Chrome Canary version for Windows on Arm came as a kind of surprise. While Microsoft has long offered a version of its Edge browser for Arm, also based on Chromium, until this week, Google showed no signs of supporting Windows on Arm. Currently, Windows devices running on the new Qualcomm Snapdragon chips have to run Chrome in emulation mode, leading to low performance.
The difference between the Edge ARM64 version and the regular Chrome x86 version running on Windows on Arm devices is significant. The native Edge version on Arm devices works just like on any other computer with an Intel processor. However, Chrome on Windows on Arm shows noticeable slowdowns and performance issues.
Google has long supported Arm processors in Chromebook laptops and offers ChromeOS optimized for Qualcomm chips. Microsoft managed to release its own version of Edge for ARM64, as the company used the base Chromium version without Google Widevine Digital Rights Management (DRM) for creating the new browser. Other browser developers using Chromium adhere to Google’s DRM, so the choice of a native Arm browser for Windows was essentially limited to Edge. Now, the situation is changing.