Clicking on external links opens Chrome but not the link
When I click on an external link and Google Chrome is not running yet, Chrome will launch but will not open the linked page. Instead, it starts at my last opened tab (which is the behaviour I expect), but the clicked link should also open in another tab.
When I click the link a second time, it will open correctly in a new tab.
Why is this?
EDIT:
For clarification, it's about macOS. Furthermore, I found it behaves different to how I described above. The link is opened in a new window the first time, instead of a new tab in the existing window. The problem is, that it does not come to the front, so the old window from my last session in Google Chrome is in the front. You don't notice the new window behind the old one unless you use mission control to see there is a second window.
EDIT 2:
Since this question got a lot of attention I finally accepted the top voted answer, though this wasn't my problem in the first place at all. I can see that there are two problems here:
When there is a pending Chrome update, Chrome does not open the external link at all, just opens another window with the default start screen. (Bug)
When Chrome is up to date, external links are opened but this time still a new window in the background and not as a new tab when restoring the last session. (bad design)
Hope this should be clear now :)
Solution 1:
I had this happening all afternoon. Then I checked Chrome | About Chrome and it was waiting for me to relaunch to update. That fixed it.
Solution 2:
Try entering chrome://restart in url line and hit enter.
This will fully restart Chrome and all of it's children processes including Chrome-based apps.
I assume it's not the Update which helped others here, but the Chrome restart.
Solution 3:
Updating Chrome solved the issue for me.
NOTE: The problem can reproduce each time a new version of Chrome is available...
Solution 4:
Updating Chrome also solved this problem for me. However, I didn't know Chrome had an update waiting until I clicked on "Chrome->About Google Chrome".
Solution 5:
Actually the workaround has been merged in Chromium already
https://chromium-review.googlesource.com/c/chromium/src/+/801030:
In macOS 10.13, if: - Chromium is the default browser - Chromium has updated - The user has not relaunched
and the user tries to open a link from an external program, instead of opening the link in the running instance of Chromium, LaunchServices tries to open a second instance of Chromium.
Currently, this causes the running instance to open a blank new window.
So this issue has nothing to do with the App Update, before it is released in Google Chrome we must restart the application to fix it temporary.
The actual root cause and proposed solution is here: https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=777863#c56