Inline means installing apps without going to the Chrome Web Store, straight from a Website. According to a post by Google Chrome on its official blog, going forward, users will only be able to install extensions from only within the Chrome Web Store, where they can view all information about an extension’s functionality prior to installing.
This change will roll out in 3 phases:
- Starting today, inline installation will be unavailable to all newly published extensions. Extensions first published on June 12, 2018 or later that attempt to call the chrome.webstore.install() function will automatically redirect the user to the Chrome Web Store in a new tab to complete the installation.
- Starting September 12, 2018, inline installation will be disabled for existing extensions, & users will be automatically redirected to the Chrome Web Store to complete the installation.
- In early December 2018, the inline install API method will be removed from Chrome 71.
For those developers who distribute an extension using inline installation, you will need to update install buttons on your Website to link to your extension’s Chrome Web Store page prior to the stable release of Chrome 71.