chromium-drift

Measure which Chromium major a shipped product actually embeds. From the installer, the extension package, or the repository. No guessing from changelogs.

Chromium ships a new major every four weeks. Products built on it (browser forks, kiosk shells, CEF and Electron apps, extensions) only move when someone moves them. These three scripts answer one question: how far behind is this thing today?

Script	Input	What it reads
measure_installer.py	a Windows installer URL or file	Chrome/NNN.x.y.z, Electron/NN.x.y and the CEF product version string, out of the binaries inside the package (nested archives included)
crx_manifest.py	a Chrome Web Store extension id	the live CRX3 package: manifest version, permissions, host permissions, content scripts, packed and unpacked size
github_pins.py	a GitHub token	organisation repositories that pin cef_binary_<ver> or an old "electron": "^NN", mapped to a Chromium major

Why the binary and not the website

Release notes lie by omission. A vendor's "what's new" page may say nothing about the engine for a year while the product ships. The version resources inside chrome.dll, libcef.dll or the Electron executable cannot. Everything this tool prints came from a file the vendor published, and the output says which file.

Examples

$ python measure_installer.py https://vendor.example/Setup.exe --stable 152
target        : https://vendor.example/Setup.exe
bytes         : 286640296
Chrome majors : [122, 127]
Electron      : [29]
CEF           : ['127.3.5+g114ea2a+chromium-127.0.6533.120']
engine major  : 127   (25 behind stable 152)

Two engines in one package: the Electron shell on Chromium 122 and a CEF browser source on 127. That is a real result from a real desktop app measured in September 2026, with the name left out.

$ python crx_manifest.py <extension id>
name                 ...
version              18.0.0
manifest_version     3
background           service_worker
host_permissions     ["<all_urls>"]
files                887
packed_bytes         120180000
unpacked_bytes       231600000

$ set GITHUB_TOKEN=...
$ python github_pins.py cef --since 2025-09-01 --out cef.json

What we found running this in September 2026

Anonymised, because the vendors got the numbers by email first:

Product type	Engine found	Behind stable 152
Commercial Windows kiosk browser	Chromium 136	16
Cloud-gaming desktop client, updated August 2026	CEF 128	24
Desktop email client, stable channel	CEF 73 (beta channel: 148)	79 / 4
Streaming studio app	Electron 29 + libcef 127	30 / 25
Security-branded consumer browser	Chromium 134	18
Crypto key-recovery desktop tool, released June 2026	Electron 22	44
Game HTML layer (public repo)	CEF 80	72
Anti-detect browsers (three vendors)	152	0
Password-manager desktop apps (two vendors)	150	2

Requirements

Python 3.9+, no third-party packages. measure_installer.py needs 7-Zip. github_pins.py needs a GitHub token in GITHUB_TOKEN.

Limits, said plainly

• Stub installers (a 2 MB bootstrapper that downloads the real package) contain no engine. Use the offline or full installer.
• Inno Setup packages do not unpack with 7-Zip; use innoextract first.
• A Chrome/NNN string in an installer can be the installer's own user agent, not the product's. The tool prints every major it saw so you can tell.
• MSIX bundles unpack fine; the engine is inside the per-architecture .msix.

Who wrote this

INNERLUXES builds and rebases Chromium-based browsers, CEF and Electron hosts, and browser extensions. We wrote these tools to measure products before offering to bring them back to current stable. If yours is on the list above, you already have our email.

MIT licence.

The browser we measure ourselves against

We ship a Chromium-based enterprise browser of our own. The engineering evidence, measured the same way this tool measures other products, is here: Our own Chromium browser, measured.