Chrome Mysteriously Installed

[S.B.G]

I just found Google Chrome installed on my iPhone this morning. It wasn’t there last night and I’ve never installed it before on my current iPhone.

The only Google product I intentionally installed was YouTube and that was last year when I bought the 17 Pro.

Has anyone else had this happen to them?

 

[FreakinEurekan]

Sure - I've not understood how things happen lots of times 😉

 

[boswald]

I just found Google Chrome installed on my iPhone this morning. It wasn’t there last night and I’ve never installed it before on my current iPhone.

The only Google product I intentionally installed was YouTube and that was last year when I bought the 17 Pro.

Has anyone else had this happen to them?

Could it have been bundled with some kind of installer? Did it come with YouTube? It is pretty sneaky on Windows so maybe they're "being evil" with iPhones now, too.

 

[S.B.G]

Not really sure. I haven't installed any apps lately on the iPhone, only ran updates. I was trying to open a file in Slack the other day, but I thought I was doing that on my work iPhone. Maybe when it wanted an app to open the file I must have not realized it offered Chrome and I tapped it and it downloaded.

Occam's Razor says that is the most likely way it ended up on my phone. I'm just having a hard time remembering it specifically!

I just wondered initially if Apple pushed it out as part of some deal with Google, much like they did that to all of us with the U2 album.

 

[Allyance]

I was browsing last night and I saw a box with a prompt to install Chrome, luckily I caught it in time, sorry I don’t remember where or what I was looking at, but it looked easy to click on it by accident.

 

[DemonBob]

I just found Google Chrome installed on my iPhone this morning. It wasn’t there last night and I’ve never installed it before on my current iPhone.

The only Google product I intentionally installed was YouTube and that was last year when I bought the 17 Pro.

Has anyone else had this happen to them?

When that happens, it's usually caused by non-sober me. Sober me usually has to uninstall a few things now and again after non-sober me gets a wild idea.

 

[ifxf]

Is it a company phone or has a MDM been installed to run company apps?

 

[S.B.G]

No, a personal phone and no MDM.

 

[BigBlur]

Is your Apple Account shared with someone else? If so, did they download it on their device, causing it to automatically download on yours? (You can turn that setting off in the App Store settings.)

Also, out of curiosity, does it show has the most recent downloaded app in the App Library? It would be the top-left icon in the 'Recently Added' section. If it doesn't, then it may have been on your phone for a while and you're somehow just noticing it now.

 

[S.B.G]

No shared account, just me. As for the app library, it isn't showing because I've already deleted it.

I'm pretty sure it happened when I was working in Slack and a document I was opening. I just didn't notice what I tapped.

 

[Sezel]

Happened once on iPad Pro M4. NFS No Limits automatically installed after an OS update. I formatted the device before the upgrade.
Not sure but might be sync or currupt DB issue which I heard at that time which was restoring very old deleted photos for lot of users.

But your case seems to be different because you never downloaded chrome and if you download any app for the first time it asks for confirmation.