lost all setting and extensions when copy Chromium to another pc

[neatgz]

chrlauncher v2.5.3
ChromiumType=stable-codecs-sync
I add some extensions and used normaly on my home PC (win10 1809 x64)
today , I copy the Chromium folder to U disk, and want to use it on my work PC(win10 1809 x64), but I lost all my settings and extensions when i open it on my work PC.
why are this happen?
thanks.

[woolyss]

Hello neatgz.

Bad news :/
But it is a normal feature of Chromium available for ALL chromium-based browsers (Google Chrome, Opera, Vivaldi, Brave...). Nothing to do with chrlauncher.

Chromium has "Secure Preferences" feature based on the machine SID. So extensions, certificates and passwords are not portable. The only way to migrate these data is to synchronize your data.

Moreover, I know there is another possibility but it uses flags (which can be disappear at any time).
ungoogled-software/ungoogled-chromium#591

For developers or experimented users, there are another difficult solutions.

• https://superuser.com/questions/1020479/how-to-migrate-google-chrome-profile-extensions-cookies-etc-to-another-wind/1265894
• https://www.adlice.com/google-chrome-secure-preferences/

Henry, you should put this info on your Github page and site!

Links relative to this feature:

• Upgrade to the next generation of Brave browser (brave-core) portapps/brave-portable#4 (About Brave)
• https://portableapps.com/apps/internet/google_chrome_portable (Read "App Notes" about Google Chrome)
• https://portableapps.com/apps/internet/opera_portable (Read "App Notes" about Opera)
• https://superuser.com/questions/634648/copy-chrome-extensions-from-one-computer-to-another
• https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/chrome/oM4KdGkwSqE
• https://cs.chromium.org/chromium/src/chrome/browser/prefs/profile_pref_store_manager.cc (Chromium code source)
  https://cs.chromium.org/chromium/src/rlz/lib/machine_id.cc?sq=package:chromium (Chromium code source)

[neatgz]

Thank you for your reply.
Thanks a lot

[tomasz1986]

Bad news :/
But it is a normal feature of Chromium available for ALL chromium-based browsers (Google Chrome, Opera, Vivaldi, Brave...). Nothing to do with chrlauncher.

There is one exception which is the Cent Browser. It is not tied to the hardware and keeps everything when copied to a different machine. The browser is unfortunately not open source, hence I do not use it personally.

With chrlauncher, the extensions folders with all the settings are actually kept intact even after moving everything to a different machine. Therefore, if you reinstall them, they will revert themselves to their previous state.

[CrafterLaughter]

@woolyss @henrypp Thanks for this info and all you guys do.

Bummer it is 2020 and Chromium devs have still kept the profiles dependent on sync (dependent on Google) in order to be transferable to another computer. (Encryption is great, but at least make it transferable)

It is especially annoying that extensions have been deemed "encrypt by default," but not user's private bookmarks.

I was really hoping to switch from Firefox to Ungoogled Chromium for the security benefit of site isolation, but this is a deal breaker. I guess I'll just have to stick it out with Firefox until their project Fission site isolation goes stable.

[graphixillusion]

@CrafterLaughter I'm totally agree with you. I'm searching from a long time for a solution to transfer extensions through machines but without any valid results. I've tried the method about restoring username's SID as suggested by the keepass guys but it doesn't work too.

[iGom]

Do we also lose history, settings, extensions and bookmarks even when we update Chromium on the same machine??? Because that's what happened to me right now.