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I've recently started using Chromium on different machines after realizing it is conveniently available from repositories across a swath of OS platforms even besides Linux (brew/choco install chromium). I understand cloud sync of profiles is not available (nor do I desire it). But I've been surprised to find that copying profile directories between machines, or even on the same machine/os on a different user account never quite works. About the only thing that remains after copying a profile directory is the bookmarks. Settings and extensions don't carry over. Is there a workaround for this? Or does this work for everyone else and I've just been hallucinating?

Ideally, I'd like to just add the profile directory to my syncthing and let it keep all of my machines at parity. In my research, I've found mention to chrome-sync-server, but it appears to be a feature removed long ago. At this point I'm just manually creating the profiles on each machine and then copying over the bookmarks and dialing in the rest of the settings by hand.

To be clear, I am speaking about the Chromium open source project and not Google Chrome or ChromeOS.

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  • It's always worked for me. I make a habit to transfer my current Google user profile to every computer I use. I do my my entire profile, including, my most recent browser session. You don't mention what operating system you are using
    – Ramhound
    Commented May 1, 2023 at 16:48
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    Are you copying the folders, or the contents of the folders? On the new computer you should replace all the contents of the profile folder.
    – harrymc
    Commented May 1, 2023 at 16:52
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    That's copying folders.
    – harrymc
    Commented May 1, 2023 at 16:56
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    @blee - There is no guarantee you can seamless transfer a Chromium user profile from Windows to Linux to macOS. I can certainly do it between two Windows installations without a problem. To be clear I accomplish that by replacing the Default profile.
    – Ramhound
    Commented May 1, 2023 at 17:06
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    As for Windows - Linux issues, consider how lines are terminated in each OS.
    – DrMoishe Pippik
    Commented May 1, 2023 at 18:34

1 Answer 1

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Cloning profiles between different platforms can encounter issues. And a potentially contributing factor could be differences in release versions of Chromium. A more specific example (that I should have included in the question) would be copying from a Linux machine to MacOS:

  • Manjaro with Chromium 112.0.5615.165 (Official Build) Arch Linux (64-bit)
  • MacOS Ventura 13.3.1 with Chromium Version 113.0.5644.0 (Developer Build) (x86_64)
rsync --delete -ta linuxdesktop:.config/chromium/ $HOME/Library/Application\ Support/Chromium

The resulting profiles will load in a broken state on MacOS, preserving some attributes (bookmarks, profile names, color schemes) but losing others (extensions and most configuration settings). An error that will occur on MacOS Chromium when it loads the profile copied from Linux saying "Some settings were reset":

Some settings were reset

A minor workaround is to set up the profiles on the MacOS side by hand, and then sync Bookmarks only. e.g.

rsync -tv linuxdesktop:.config/chromium/Default/Bookmarks $HOME/Library/Application\ Support/Chromium/Default/Bookmarks

Windows would probably encounter at least as many issues.

A big thanks to folks in the comments for helping me think through the problem here.

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