Wednesday 11 October 2017

Termination of Chrome Apps - ARC native application

Some time ago Google decided to terminate support for Chrome apps in Chrome. Therefore Advanced REST Client will be removed from Chrome.

For last few months I've been preparing the app to this by externalizing parts of application code to a number of web components. Web components based on the native platform helps me build ARC as a different applications running in different web environments (web, node, Chrome / Firefox extensions etc). Last week I've moved rest of the application logic to external component. This enabled me to work on alternatives for ARC as a Chrome App.

Now I'm proud to announce that currently I'm finishing testing Advanced REST Client native application. The app is available on all major platforms:

- Windows (32 and 64-bit)
- MacOS
- Linux - as a rpm and deb package (both 32 and 64-bit)

Because the application is still being tested I am not going to publish installation URL to you at this time. When I'm sure that the application is bugs free I'll update the Chrome Application with information about migration path and post another article on this blog.

Action to be taken now

Because Chrome Apps will be forcibly removed from Chrome your data will disappear as well. To not lost your data please use the export option today to export the data to a file or to Google Drive.

Note: Native application has different Google's Client ID and therefore it is not possible to open Google Drive file from the application ui. You'll have to authorize the application within the app UI and then go to Google Drive web app and choose "open with" option for the file.

Also you can export the file to Google Drive and later simply download it and import as file.


The timeline 

In a month (or so) from now Chrome applications will be removed from Chrome. Replacement application is ready but it's not fully tested. Also it still need a code verification certificate (I am working on this issue) before stable release.

In 2 weeks time new application should be released in stable channel. At the same time Chrome application is released with information about termination of Chrome apps and path to migrate.

In a month Chrome apps are terminated and hopefully all users have been migrated to new application.

See you in the new app!