I upgraded Google Chrome on my Linux system (Ubuntu) and immediately noticed it was eating up CPU like crazy. No idea why—maybe some bug in the new version. Whatever the reason, I needed to downgrade quickly.

My first thought was to use the usual apt-cache policy approach to install a previous version. This normally shows available package versions you can install.

apt-cache policy google-chrome-stable

But in my case, it only showed the latest version. Not helpful.

After some digging, I found a straightforward way to manually download and install an older Chrome version directly from Google’s official repository.

Finding the Right Version

First, I needed to find the exact version number I wanted to downgrade to. Google maintains a Chrome releases blog where they announce updates:

Chrome Releases - Desktop Updates

I browsed through recent entries until I found a stable version that was released before my issues started. For example:

Stable Channel Update for Desktop
Tuesday, July 29, 2025

The Stable channel has been updated to 138.0.7204.183/.184 for Windows, Mac and 138.0.7204.183 for Linux...

The Linux version number is what I needed: 138.0.7204.183.

Downloading and Installing

With the version number in hand, I could download the specific .deb package directly from Google:

wget http://dl.google.com/linux/chrome/deb/pool/main/g/google-chrome-stable/google-chrome-stable_138.0.7204.183-1_amd64.deb

Then install it using dpkg:

sudo dpkg -i ./google-chrome-stable_138.0.7204.183-1_amd64.deb

Done. Chrome was back to the older version and the CPU usage returned to normal.

Quick Notes

  • Always download from Google’s official repository (dl.google.com), not third-party sites
  • The version format is typically [version]-1_amd64.deb for 64-bit Linux systems
  • You might want to hold the package to prevent automatic updates: sudo apt-mark hold google-chrome-stable

This approach worked perfectly for my situation. Sometimes the simplest solution is just grabbing the file you need directly from the source.

Reference: Ubuntu Downgrade Google Chrome