Google Puts Chrome NPAPI Support On Final Countdown

Google is moving towards the final steps in eliminating Netscape Plugin Application Programming Interface (NPAPI) plug-in support from the Chrome/Chromium web browser.

Last year Google announced plans to remove NPAPI support from Chrome in favor of their own Pepper Plugin API (PPAPI). Right now Chrome still supports NPAPI plug-ins but most are disabled by default except for the most popular plug-ins. In January, Google is moving forward with dropping their NPAPI whitelist from Chrome so that all plug-ins will be blocked by default.

After the whitelist is dropped in January, users will have until April when they can still enable NPAPI plug-ins at which point the NPAPI support will be disabled by default and extensions depending upon it will be removed from the Chrome Web Store. Next September is when Google plans to completely remove NPAPI plug-in support from Chrome.

Chrome users still using NPAPI plug-ins rather than PPAPI, see the Chromium blog for more details on how to override the defaults, etc.