Where Does Google Chrome Store User History, Profile & Bookmarks?
Posted on September 8, 2008 at 23:08I have been using and enjoying Google Chrome for the past couple of days. So as I am setting up my new computer, I am installing Chrome there as well. While doing this, I would like to bring over my saved browsing history and bookmarks so that I don’t have to build it from scratch on the new machine. The only problem is that while Chrome makes it very easy to import existing settings from Firefox, it does not display any visible option to export current settings.
After a bit of digging, I found the location where Chrome stored user data:
- On XP – C:\Documents and Settings\<User Name>\Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Chrome\User Data
- On Vista - C:\Users\<User Name>\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data
The User Data folder contains three files: Local State, Safe Browsing and Safe Browsing Filter, along with a folder called Default. Default in turn contains your browser cache, plugin data, and all of your cookies and history data. To move my profile over to my new computer, I copied all of the files and folders under User Data on my XP machine, and moved them into the User Data on my new Vista machine (all of the files were nearly 100mb after only four days of use, which will give you some kind of idea about the amount of indexing going on in the background). When I next started Chrome on my Vista machine, it was identical to the app on my XP machine, down to most popular sites, history and cookies. I even started writing this post on my XP machine, and then continued it on my Vista machine without having to log in again into my Wordpress admin.
In the end this was pretty easy to do. Though the ease of profile transfer could in turn make it easy for someone to steal someone else’s identity – after all, the cookies file (presumably a sqllite db or something similar) was only 256KB, and merely dropping it in the new User Data allowed a complete transfer of identity (perhaps a good security feature would be to allow the \User Data\Default\Cookies file to work only on the originally installed instance).
6 Responses to “Where Does Google Chrome Store User History, Profile & Bookmarks?”
1) Eric A. Duncan on Sep 22, 2008 | Reply
Believe it or not, this is where Microsoft actually did good with security over other browsers (where it secures the cookies/data). M$’s IE secures the stored passwords and cookies via light encryption based on the current user’s windows’ account (the old nt profile concept). Merely copying files/profile over will not validate the files, as the guid and other items have changed from one computer to another.
2) Yaakov Ellis on Sep 22, 2008 | Reply
Eric – I agree. I find it slightly disturbing that this personal information is not directly tied to an install. Someone could easily set up an autoexecute program on a USB thumb drive that would copy all of your cookies and history from chrome in less than 10 seconds – and then they have your email, and then they have everything.
3) lanceloz on Sep 25, 2008 | Reply
Excellent, thank you! It worked like a breeze.
4) AppreciativeVisitor on Oct 8, 2008 | Reply
Thanks for the very informative posting! Much appreciated.
5) Henrik on Dec 30, 2008 | Reply
Very informative and useful article. Thanks. Seems like there is no simple method to manipulate a single cookie using file manager. Only via Chrome > Settings > Options > Under the Hood > Show Cookies
6) Jeff on Jan 3, 2009 | Reply
Very informative, thank you. And personally I actually prefer the Google Chrome approach over the MS IE one. It saves time to be able to have everything in one folder/place, and if I feel that security is important well then I just won’t share my password/computer access in the first place.