Google has acknowledged that a recent Chrome update may have caused problems to the reboot process of some macOS machines. The problem was first spotted by film and TV editors across Los Angeles after their Mac Pro computers running older macOS versions and installed with Avid’s Media Composer software refused to reboot (via Variety).
A computer virus attack was initially blamed, but Google has issued a statement via its Chrome Help page revealing the possible culprit behind the issue. A Google Chrome support manager explains:
"We recently discovered that a Chrome update may have shipped with a bug that damages the file system on macOS machines with System Integrity Protection (SIP) disabled, including machines that do not support SIP. We"ve paused the release while we finalize a new update that addresses the problem."
Of course, the bug doesn"t affect machines with SIP turned on and that are running OS X 10.9 or later. Meanwhile, Google offers a workaround for the problem using a series of commands. First, those with affected systems can boot into recovery mode and then open the Terminal application from the Utilities menu.
Google details the commands for recovering a machine affected by the bug here. After performing this step, reboot the machine in order to both delete the unwanted updater and recover the damaged part of the file system.