I recently noticed that my project was stuck on @types/chrome@0.0.268 even after running npm update. Turned out the culprit is the package's 0.0.x version scheme.

Per npm's semver rules, a caret on a pre-1.0.0 package cannot bump any leftmost non-zero component. See the node-semver docs: https://github.com/npm/node-semver#caret-ranges-123-025-004.

Caret Ranges ^1.2.3 ^0.2.5 ^0.0.4
Allows changes that do not modify the left-most non-zero element in the [major, minor, patch] tuple. In other words, this allows patch and minor updates for versions 1.0.0 and above, patch updates for versions 0.X >=0.1.0, and no updates for versions 0.0.X.

Because every release of @types/chrome is 0.0.*, the default range generated by npm i -D @types/chrome effectively pins users to the exact patch they installed the first time. npm outdated shows a newer "Latest" (currently 0.0.329) but "Wanted" stays at the old patch, so npm update never moves forward.

Suggestion: publish future releases as 0.<minor>.<patch> (e.g., 0.1.0, 0.2.0) or jump to 1.x.