Multiple Google Chrome icons appearing in Dock

Fixing Multiple Google Chrome Icons in the macOS Dock

If three identical Google Chrome icons appear side by side in the Dock after updating macOS, and all three open the same browser window, follow these steps in order.

Quit Chrome completely. Press Command (⌘) + Q. Check whether the icons remain. If they do, they may be pinned Dock shortcuts rather than separate running applications.

Remove duplicate Dock icons. Control-click an extra Chrome icon and select Options → Remove from Dock, if available. Alternatively, drag the extra icon out of the Dock until “Remove” appears. Keep one icon. This removes only the shortcut, not Chrome itself. See Apple’s guide to using the Dock.

Restart your Mac. Open Chrome again and check whether the duplicate icons return.

Test in Safe Mode if the problem persists. Follow Apple’s official Safe Mode instructions. If the duplicates disappear in Safe Mode but return after a normal restart, investigate software or login items that load during normal startup. If they remain, continue to the next step.

Check for duplicate Chrome installations. Open Finder → Applications and look for multiple copies of Google Chrome. Verify which copy you use before removing any unnecessary duplicate. If you need to reinstall Chrome, use Google’s official download and installation instructions.

If the problem continues, investigate the Dock configuration. Check System Settings >> Desktop & Dock, particularly the option to show suggested and recent apps. You can also consult Apple’s Dock settings guide.

Conclusion

Chrome tabs alone should not normally create three separate application icons in the Dock. Start by removing duplicate shortcuts, then restart and test. Use Safe Mode and check for duplicate installations only if the problem returns. These steps help isolate the cause without unnecessarily deleting Chrome or its browsing data.

If the three icons return after restarting, the most useful next step is to check the Dock configuration.

In my experience the browser only has a single configuration/settings which are shared by all versions of a particular app at least for the Chromium based browsers. So all standard versions of the Google browser will be accessing the same configuration profiles & data.

It is also possible you only have a single Google Chrome instance installed, but the Dock now includes multiple aliases to the same single app.

If you have multiple Chrome apps on your system, then delete them all except for the most recent version of Chrome (check the Downloads folder in case someone downloaded Chrome & left it there...better, use the Finder search to look for Google Chrome). If you only have a single Chrome app on your system, then delete two of those aliases from the Dock.

As @etresoft mentioned, Google Chrome is very buggy. I don't have these problems running other third party Chromium based browsers such as Vivaldi. If those others can use the base code & not have problems, then it clearly points to the Google Chrome developers not caring about macOS.

Fiskbulle wrote:

Why do I see multiple app icons in my dock?

I have just installed Mac OS 27.2 and I now have three identical Google Chrome icons in my Dock. When I click on them, the exact same browser window opens?

Chrome is buggy. It's known to build its apps incorrectly so that they don't work properly with certain Apple Privacy protections like Local Network privacy. This bug could also affect how they show up in the Dock.