The Update Interruption
Google Chrome is designed to update itself silently in the background. However, when a major version update is installed and you relaunch the browser, Chrome frequently hijacks your startup routine by automatically opening a new tab displaying the “Welcome to Chrome” or “What’s New” page. This page highlights new features, design changes, or security updates. While Google intends this to be helpful, if you are quickly opening your browser to join a video meeting or check an urgent email, having your focus stolen by a promotional tab is a frustrating interruption.
Silencing the Welcome Screen
To stop Chrome from aggressively advertising its own updates every time the version number changes, you must use Chrome’s hidden experimental flags to explicitly disable the “What’s New” promotional page trigger.
Open Google Chrome, click into the address bar at the top, type exactly chrome://flags, and press Enter to load the experiments dashboard. In the search box at the top of the flags page, type What’s New. You should see a specific flag appear in the results labelled “Chrome What’s New” or “Show What’s New page on update” (the exact naming can vary slightly between browser builds). Click the dropdown menu next to this flag on the right-hand side. By default, it will be set to “Default”; you must change this setting to Disabled. A blue “Relaunch” button will appear at the bottom of the window. Click it to restart the browser. From this point forward, Chrome will continue to update silently in the background, but it will never again interrupt your workflow with a welcome tab.