Google Chrome 2.0 pre beta(dev channel) has been released with more new features included. GoogleSystem has gone extra miles by illustrating these features into the post together with screen shot. It is very useful indeed, a pictures is worth a thousand word.

Pre-beta channel/version is usually unstable, and containing a lot of bugs. Although public users are not recommended to use this version/channel, but it is common that everybody want to get taste of something that had just been released.

So how to do upgrade and if the beta version give you more trouble than productivity, how to downgrade it. This is the steps that I’ve tried this morning.

Upgrading channel/version

1. Backup your Chrome data (favorites, profile and etc). As per dev chrome page -

Make a copy of the User Data\Default directory (for example, copy it to ‘Default Backup’ in the same location). The location depends on your operating system:

Windows XP: \Documents and Settings\username\Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Chrome\

2. Download Chrome Channel Changer.

3. If you don’t have Chrome installed, download and install it first.

4. Run Chrome Channel Manager and choose the desired channel.

Why you have to run Chrome Channel Manager? Without doing this, your the Chrome installed is updated as per that channel. So no button update shown to you.

Before you choose other channel/release

After you choose other channel, an update button will appear.

5. In Google Chrome, click the wrench menu and choose About Google Chrome. Click on ‘Update Now’

Once completed, you’ll be asked to restart the Chrome and there you go your latest Chrome!!

Downgrading

1. Reinstall Chrome.
[notes] Clicking the ‘Download Google Chrome’ button doesn’t seems working if you already have Chrome installed on your computer. I have to uninstall it, before make a new fresh install.

2. ‘Stable channel’ would be the default channel. (optional)Run Chrome Channel Changer if you want to go for ‘Beta’ channel

3. Replace back the ‘User Data’ with the backup data. Keep in mind that different channel has difference configuration. The profile from the latest channel is not compatible  with previous channel

Lesson learned

If found this  article quite misleading about how to move back to the original channel, I spend sometime to digest this ‘guide’ before I found the right document on Chromium dev page themselves. Lesson learned..

…. then download the Chrome Channel Changer (.exe link); run that app and select the developer channel. Then open Chrome, click the wrench menu and choose “About Google Chrome” where you’ll need to click “Update Now” to install the current channel’s release. After that you’ll need to restart Chrome.

If the 2.0 alpha doesn’t live up to your stability expectations, just reverse the instructions to get the stable version back.

From dev channel page

If you decide to switch from Dev to Beta or from Beta to Stable, the new channel will be on an earlier version of Google Chrome. You won’t get automatic updates on that channel until it reaches a version later than what you’re already running.

You can uninstall Google Chrome and re-install from http://www.google.com/chrome to go back to an earlier version. (If you want to be on the Beta channel, you have to run the channel changer again after re-installing).