Google is completely removing FTP access from Chrome
Users of the Chrome browser will no longer be able to view FTP directories or download files from FTP servers.
File Transfer Protocol (FTP) used to be the standard for viewing and downloading files via the internet. It has since been replaced by SSH and HTTPS because of its security weaknesses and inability to encrypt traffic.
Google began dismantling FTP functionality from Chrome in version 72. The current version of Chrome, version 79, now only supports directory listing and downloading. The remaining functionality can be viewed by visiting ftp://ftp.adobe.com/ in Chrome.
Google has released a timeline for the complete removal of FTP from Chrome.
- Chrome 80 (stable in February 2020) will disable FTP by default for non-enterprise versions of Chrome, but it can be reenabled with
chrome://flags - Chrome 81 (stable in March 2020) will disable FTP by default for all versions of Chrome, but it can still be reenabled with
chrome://flags - Chrome 82 (stable in April 2020) will completely remove FTP support
Google stated that the reason for completely removing FTP from Chrome was that the usage of FTP in the browser is sufficiently low that it is no longer viable to invest in improving the existing FTP client.
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