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Google Chrome Portable not retaining customizations

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ImmortalMonkey
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Google Chrome Portable not retaining customizations

Hey all,

Is anyone have trouble with Chrome Portable resetting to default when moving from PC to PC? What is happening specifically is stuff like my extensions will disappear but will retain their settings when reinstalled and saved passwords are cleared. The only thing that seems to be retained from PC to PC is cookies and browsing history.

Anyone else see this? Current version: 62.0.3202.94

Thank you,

Paul.

John T. Haller
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Google Chrome Portable Caveats

Here are the caveats listed on the Google Chrome Portable homepage and in the license page presented during installation:

Passwords Not Saved Between PCs By Default: Google Chrome stores passwords in such a way that they are encrypted in a way tied to current PC. While the passwords are not kept or left behind on the PC itself, they won't be retrievable when you move to a new PC. We've added password portability as an advanced option, though, which you can enable by reading the help.html file.

Certificates Not Portable: Google Chrome has no certificate manager. It uses Windows' certificates manager. So, any certificates you install through the Google Chrome interface are stored on the current local machine and will not travel with you. Thus, you should not use any private certificates with Google Chrome except on your own PC.

Some Settings Locked Per PC: Google Chrome locks specific settings to a given PC. Details are included in this post. This behavior is by design by the Chrome team. If you would like this changed, please file a bug with the Chrome team. A suggested workaround is to sign in to Google to restore all settings and extensions and to use an extension such as Session Buddy to maintain your session state as you move PCs. Note that PortableApps.com has not evaluated this extension.

Firefox Portable has no such issues as Firefox is designed to be more self-contained.

Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!

ImmortalMonkey
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Thank you, John. Apologies

Thank you, John. Apologies for overlooking that information.

merlinpatt
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Extensions don't sync

The caveats you quoted don't mention extensions but those are disappearing as well. And for me, it's the extensions I care about, not the other stuff.

Also I've signed into Chrome Portable but I keep having to re login.

I just started using chrome portable otherwise I would have replied sooner.

John T. Haller
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It Does

It talks about extensions in the third paragraph. If you'd like a properly portable browser, you can switch to Firefox. It's as fast as Chrome, fully open source, and fully portable.

Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!

merlinpatt
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It doesn't say extensions don

It doesn't say extensions don't sync. It says some settings don't sync. Extensions are not settings. If someone does count them as settings, then that should be clarified.

Also suggesting another browser isn't a solution. I, and many people, use a specific browser because we chose it, so we don't want to switch to another browser.

I had found a post from sometime ago saying that they were working on getting extensions to be portable the same way they had made passwords portable. Is that still going to happen?

John T. Haller
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Extensions

It says "A suggested workaround is to sign in to Google to restore all settings and extensions..." You will lose your extensions every time you move PCs. This is by design of the Chromium team and affects all Chromium-based browsers. There is no workaround. The old code we had to portablize extensions no longer works. Chrome is purposely designed to lock itself to a single PC and to lose all extensions/most settings when moved. This also affects you if you use the local version and move to a new PC. In my opinion, you should not use Chrome anywhere unless you log in and sync with Google due to the fact that it treats extensions/settings as disposable. The only mainstream browser that is fully portable is Firefox in the form of Firefox Portable. It has been this way for years and is unlikely to change.

Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!

toxi
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Chrome is purposely designed

Chrome is purposely designed to lock itself to a single PC and to lose all extensions/most settings when moved

For the same reason, I do not remember "remembering me" on most sites, after I closed the browser or rebooted the PC to which I copied the portable version of Google Chrome?

John T. Haller
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Log In To Google

To use Google Chrome Portable properly, you must have the browser itself log into Google. If you do not wish to do this, use another browser like Firefox Portable.

Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!

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