The cause: "Local Network Access", the Google blocking that breaks cash registers worldwide
How your POS used to print
An "online" cash register runs in a browser. But your receipt printer is plugged into your PC. To bridge the two, POS vendors install a small utility on the computer. When you clicked "print", your POS web page contacted that utility through the browser, on the PC's local address (127.0.0.1). This mechanism, used by nearly every web-based POS for 15 years, worked without anyone giving it a thought.
What Google changed
To fight real attacks (malicious websites probing home networks), Google decided that a website would no longer be allowed to contact local devices — printers included — without explicit permission. This restriction is called Local Network Access (LNA).
The intent is legitimate. But the execution hits a massive professional use case head-on: receipt printing. And the blocking is silent — no message appears in most real-world setups, as the permission prompt only shows under precise technical conditions that many POS applications do not meet.
Documented timeline
| Date | Event |
|---|---|
| 30 Sept 2025 | Google announces the restriction (planned for Chrome 141) |
| 28 Oct 2025 | Chrome 142: rollout of the "Local Network Access" permission |
| Late 2025 – 2026 | Progressive tightening: from warning to strict blocking, version after version. Edge, Brave and Opera follow (same Chromium engine) |
| After Chrome 152 | Announced removal of the last official escape hatch ("TemporaryOptOut") |
| 2026 → | Checkout PCs fail one by one, at the pace of their reboots (browsers only apply updates when restarted) |
Proof it is not just your store
- Dell published an official notice: its online support is disrupted by these restrictions
- Okta and Cisco (Duo), IT security giants, published workaround guides for their own products
- Entire universities (Cornell, Northwestern…) alerted their campuses
- POS vendors, often small teams, have mostly not yet adapted their software
Why the "Chrome settings" are often not enough
In theory, allowing your POS site in the browser settings should be enough. In practice, we have documented cases where the browser ignores its own settings: permission saved but not applied, enterprise policies shown as "not set" despite correct configuration, buggy internal permission migration. And even when the setting works, the next browser change can undo it.
That is why the durable repair is to treat the blocking where it happens: inside the browser itself. That is exactly what our extension does →