The auto-update expiration date on Chromebooks serves two purposes. First, hardware doesn’t have an infinite lifespan, and the processors in Chromebooks aren’t the most powerful.
With a Chromebook, the OS doesn’t expire—the actual Chromebook does and you no longer get updates at all. It’s not really ‘8 years’ on new Chromebooks Even the “8 years” the newest Chromebook is supposed to last isn’t necessarily 8 years in your actual hands.
While writing we ran into the inquiry “How do I know when my Chromebook will expire?”.
Here, Google lists all Chromebook models and their corresponding expiry dates. Models due to expire in less than 90 days are highlighted in bold. Once your device reaches its Auto Update Expiration date, you will receive a notification saying “This device will no longer receive the latest software updates.
Essentially, Your Chromebook would stop being able to support the security/software updates released after its EOL has passed. Google has extended the lifetime of the Chromebook from 3 to 5 to 6.5 years, currently.
What you will find, however, are a lot of used Chromebooks we’d consider to be on the “close to spoiling” list being sold. Many Chromebooks with expiration dates of June 2022 can still be found in online stores. For example, we found the Acer Chromebook 14 CB3-431-C99D selling for $300 or more.
How long do Chromebooks automatically update?
Starting from the device platform release date, all Chromebooks using that platform will receive auto-update support for eight years. To be exact, the support will end in the month of June, following the completion of those eight years. So the exact AUE date may be a bit more or less than precisely eight years.
Another question we ran across in our research was “How long will Google’s auto-update support for Chromebooks last?”.
Some have found that as reported by The Register, Google will provide new hardware with 6.5 years of auto-update support. While that may sound like a long time (Chromebooks were first introduced just 8 years ago), the timer starts counting down from the time “when the first device on the platform is released.”.
Is your Chromebook end of support?
Support for these laptops was due to expire on June 2022 but has been extended to June 2025. Are you thinking about buying a Chromebook? If so, find out how old the model is or risk purchasing an unsupported laptop. As it turns out, every Chromebook as an expiration date on which Google stops supporting the device.