The ability to save your username and passwords in Google Chrome is a brilliant time saver and a convenient feature to save you the hassle of remembering all of your account details to the websites you need to access. However, what if you want to have a backup of your chrome passwords. There could be many situations you need to backup the passwords:
- You are moving from one laptop to another.
- Changing, reinstalling or updating the operating system.
- Wanted to modify the new passwords in bulk and re-upload them into Chrome.
- If you found that your passwords are compromised or you want to update them in bulk
How to Export Passwords from Chrome
It’s just a simple process of activating the export button in Chrome and after that, you can then export your saved passwords in a CSV file to the local computer.
Important!!! Before continuing, we must make one thing very clear. The export function of web browsers saves all our passwords in plain text, without encryption. Browsers export a plain text file (CSV) to us, inside which are the URLs of the websites, the user and the password. Any user who has access to this file will be able to access all of our passwords.
Follow the steps given below:
- Go to “chrome://settings” URL on the address bar.
- Click on the “Manage passwords” option under “Autofill” section.
- This will take you to the Chrome password manager. You can also use the command URL “chrome://settings/passwords” directly on the Chrome address bar to go to password management section.
- Now, click on the three dot buttons against “Saved Passwords” option. You will see a “Export Passwords…” button and click on it.
- Chrome will show you an export passwords prompt and click on “Export Passwords” button.
- You need to enter the administrator password of your PC or Mac in order to export passwords from Chrome. This is the only security Chrome has to protect your passwords. This essentially means anyone having the administrator password of your computer can download all your passwords from Chrome browser. Enter your admin password and click ok.
- By default, Chrome will assign the file name as “Chrome Passwords” and the file format will in comma-separated values (CSV). If required, change the file name and choose the destination folder you want to save on your computer.
- Now that you have the CSV file saved on your PC. Open it with Microsoft Excel on Windows or with Apple Numbers on Mac to see all your usernames and passwords stored in Chrome.
Enable Password Import Flag
You can directly modify the passwords in the CSV file and import back to Chrome. However, by default Chrome disabled this password import option and you need to enable it from the Chrome flags section.
- First close all other browser sessions as you need to relaunch the browser.
- Go to “chrome://flags” and search for “password import” flag.
- You will see a “Password import” flag showing with “Default” option indicating it is disabled on the browser (or you may see “Disabled”).
- Choose “Enabled” from the dropdown and relaunch the browser.
Related Content – Chrome Flags You Should Be Using Right Now!
Importing Passwords Back to Chrome
- Now go back to Chrome password manager under the settings URL “chrome://settings/passwords”. Click on the three dots button against “Saved Passwords”. You will see an additional option “Import” added there.
If you do not see the import function –
- Go to “chrome://flags” and search for “password import” flag.
- You will see a “Password import” flag showing with “Default” option indicating it is disabled on the browser (or you may see “Disabled”).
- Choose “Enabled” from the dropdown and relaunch the browser.
- Click on the “Import” option and select the modified CSV file containing all your passwords. Now Chrome password manager will update all the passwords from the CSV file to the browser. Remember, file upload will overwrite any existing entries with the same username and password for the particular website.
