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I am using Windows 10 (21H2) and I have a semi-old chrome shortcut for a site, that I set up to open in a new window (so that it works like an app - create shortcut -> open in new window). Problem is, it doesn't work anymore - at least not since a chrome update a while ago. Instead of fussing around to figure out why it doesn't work, I just want to create the shortcut again, to not overcomplicate things. I have backups going back several years, so this shouldn't be hard to figure out. Shouldn't.

Problem is, I can't figure out where chrome stores the URLs for these shortcuts/web apps. The shortcut is a shortcut to "C:\Program Files\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome_proxy.exe" --profile-directory=Default --app-id=XXX, the XXX being what looks like some kind of GUID.

To understand how this all works, I've created another "web app" to see how things change. I've already seen this question but Chrome doesn't seem to be creating an extension with a matching string, as suggested in the answer. I've looked all around Google, and I can't seem to find anything there. I've analyzed the web app creation process with Process Monitor, and while I've found where it places Icons in the file system and uninstall information in the registry, I still have no clue where it stores the URL.

So where does Chrome store these URLs?

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So, one and a half years later, I finally found the answer to this question:

The URLs are stored in the profile folder, in Sync Data\LevelDB. On Windows, that would be %LOCALAPPDATA%\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default\Sync Data\LevelDB. You're looking for the files that end in .ldb. These are key-value stores, according to this site. It can be opened in a text file, even though it's kind of hard to read through - but you will find the app names and the URLs in there. The search tool of the text editor or the findstr command on Windows (I believe the Linux equivalent is grep) will be your best friend.

Thanks to @Arctiic, since his commend helped me narrow down the haystack quite a bit.

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An answer is found in the post Location of Chrome Web Apps (PWAs) :

Windows 10/8/7: C:\Users\%USERNAME%\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default\Web Applications\

macOS: ~/Library/Application Support/Google/Chrome/Default/Web Applications

Linux: ~/.config/google-chrome/Default/Web Applications

Linux (Chromium): ~/.config/chromium/Default/Web Applications

Chrome OS: /home/chronos/Web Applications

Note : I have found a shortcut that I created in the folders, so the above might have changed with the latest Chrome versions :

  • C:\Users\USER-NAME\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default\Web Applications
  • C:\Users\Harry\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default\Web Applications\Manifest Resources
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    Unfortunately, that folder only seems to have an icon as well as an md5 hash for the icon file. There is no trace of a URL there.
    – Benjamin Krausse DB
    Commented Jan 13, 2023 at 11:16
  • I created a web-app shortcut and searched for its app-id. I added the folders I found to my answer.
    – harrymc
    Commented Jan 13, 2023 at 11:37
  • Unfortunately, that other folder also only seems to have icons. At least in my case there are three folders: Icons, Icons Maskable and Icons Monochrome. Icons has icons, the other two folders have nothing, and there are no files in the Manifest Resources (to avoid confusion: hidden icons are shown).
    – Benjamin Krausse DB
    Commented Jan 16, 2023 at 8:31
  • I can't recall which off the top of my head, but there should be a Chrome internals page, e.g., chrome://app-service-internals that enumerates the URI's.
    – Arctiic
    Commented Apr 16 at 7:26
  • @Arctiic Interesting. At least now I've finally found the information on the apps that do work. Now the question is where it's getting that information from. Maybe when I have some time again I can load that page and use the developer tools to see where it's getting the information from.
    – Benjamin Krausse DB
    Commented Jul 5 at 12:12

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