Google just skipped six versions on one of Chromebook’s quietest update tracks. On October 6, the ChromeOS Long Term Support channel jumped straight from LTS-144 to LTS-150, folding in 43 security fixes along the way. If that channel name means nothing to you, it probably doesn’t affect your laptop. If you manage a fleet of them, it’s worth five minutes of attention.
What actually happened
Chrome Releases posted two notices within a day of each other. The first, on October 6, confirmed the Long Term Support Candidate for 150 had been promoted to the real LTS-150 build, closing out LTS-144. The second, a day later, listed the security math: 43 fixes total, split into nine critical, 31 high, and three medium severity bugs, each tied to its own CVE.
What makes this one different from the routine LTS patches is the size of the leap. LTS-144 only ever got two point updates while it was the active branch, one in July patching two critical flaws, another later that month patching 29 more. Both of those stayed on version 144. This time, Google didn’t patch 144 again. It moved the whole LTS channel forward to 150 in one go, which means devices on that track inherit roughly six major versions’ worth of accumulated changes at once instead of the usual slow drip.
Who this actually touches
Most Chromebook owners reading this aren’t on the LTS channel at all. It exists specifically for schools, businesses, and kiosk-style deployments that an IT admin has pinned to a slower, more predictable update cadence on purpose, trading new features for fewer surprises. Regular consumer Chromebooks on the Stable channel have already moved through 151 and 152 months ago and won’t notice this change.
If your device is one of the pinned ones, though, this update lands automatically unless someone has explicitly locked it to 144 in the admin console. That’s the part worth double-checking. Staying on 144 on purpose, for compatibility testing or a staged rollout, is a reasonable call. Staying on 144 by accident, because nobody revisited the policy, means missing out on nine critical fixes that the rest of the fleet already has.
Why the jump is this big
The LTS channel’s whole pitch is fewer, more spaced-out updates for devices where stability matters more than having the newest Chrome features the week they ship. That tradeoff works fine until the gap between LTS branches opens wide enough that catching up means absorbing a lot of change in one update instead of several smaller ones. Six versions in a single jump is on the larger end of what this site has seen, and it lines up with Google’s broader push to keep ChromeOS supported on a long horizon, the same commitment behind the update support pledge through 2034.
What Chromebook owners should do
If you’re on a personal, unmanaged Chromebook, there’s nothing to do here. Your device was never on the LTS channel in the first place, and regular Stable updates keep arriving on their normal schedule.
If you administer Chromebooks for a school or business, it’s worth confirming where your fleet actually sits. Check the admin console’s OS version policy, or on an individual device go to Settings, then About ChromeOS, then Check for updates, to see whether it has already picked up 150. If a device is still showing 144 and that wasn’t a deliberate choice, that’s the one to fix first, since LTS-144 isn’t getting more security patches now that 150 is the active branch. Our guide to updating ChromeOS manually walks through the steps if an update is stuck or hasn’t triggered on its own.
This also closes out a thread we’d flagged back when ChromeOS 151 hit beta: LTS devices were expected to sit on 144 only until October, and that’s exactly what happened. For the fuller history of LTS-144’s two security patches, see our coverage of the first LTS-144 update and the bigger second patch that followed three weeks later.
