Google-chrome – How to close a Google Chrome profile

Do you have your extensions set to sync to a Google account?

I have the same version and I have been having a similar problem with all my extension settings being reset every time I do a clean launch of Chrome. Here is a temporary fix that worked for me:

1. Open your Settings by using the menu item Tools => Setting or browsing to chrome://settings/
2. Click the "Advanced sync settings..." button under "Sign in"
3. Change "Sync everything" to "Choose what to sync"
4. Uncheck Extensions
5. Click Ok
6. Close every instance of Chrome and do a clean launch (or just reboot your computer to be safe)

Of course, this is only a temporary fix because it makes all your extension settings local to that computer, but for me that is better that reapplying all my extension settings every time I launch Chrome.

I found a way to transfer without resetting. As you can guess, Chrome keeps around checksum/hash in the user profile.

I found the file is User Data\Default\Secure Preferences. This is a plain-text JSON file, so we can take a look of it. In this file there are this protection and super_mac, which stores the HMAC_SHA256 of the other objects. If verification fails, the reset is triggered. This feature is implemented in Chromium, so if you are interested you can read their source code.

The way I go is this:

1. Make sure you backup your old profile before anything. Make sure your User Data\Default\Extensions still has all extension directories.
2. Make sure you also sync everything you need to Google account. Note, even you do this, many local extension preferences are not synced (extension not support). That's why we need next steps.
3. Create a new profile. Then sync up with Google account. This will download every extension to the new profile. This step is to get you a good new Secure Preferences file.
4. Close Chrome. Find the Secure Preferences file from the new profile. Use it to replace the one in your old profile. Remove the new profile and replace with your old profile. Now you should have almost everything restored.
5. There is chance that some of your extensions (their preferences are still intact) are missing. This is because the extension directory path is versioned, and in step 3 Chrome created different path. You need to rename those from the old profile to the new one. Do not tamper the Secure Preferences.

Good luck. I really hope Google change mind to allow user to transfer profile, since they can't guarantee that every extension will implement the preference sync.

For time being, this method works on Chrome 49.0.2623.75. Google may change the verification method in the future.