How in the Tech

Allowing Chrome to sync browser extensions across installs

By Adam Myers ⋅ July 5, 2010 ⋅ Tags: Google Chrome

Syncing your browser information to cloud is quite a hot feature on the modern browsers. With both Firefox and their Weave project and Google Chrome and their equivalent – syncing of your bookmarks and username/passwords (with appropriate security atop) across all your browser installs is certainly conveinent. About a month ago, Google expanded their sync efforts with the ability to include extensions as part of the process. Now, all Chrome browser installs attached to your Google account can sync bookmarks, preferences, themes, and installed extensions – at least if you are in the dev channel and have enabled the experimental feature.

The Chrome dev channels updates silently in the background a few times a month, but first you need to ensure you are subscribed. The easiest method to switch from the stable or beta channels to dev is to download and run then Google Chrome Channel Changer and then updating the browser through the Chrome Help->About menu. It’s at this point I should mention the dev channel is under heavy and active development so user beware, things may become rather shaky and unstable at times. However, if you want bleeding edge features, sometimes you have to deal with a bit of bumps and bruises.

To enable the extension sync functionality requires passing a command line parameter to the Chrome executable, as is typical with any not quite ready for prime-time Chrome feature.

Locate your Chrome shortcut, either on the desktop or in your Start Menu. Right-click and choose Properties.

On the Shortcut tab look for the target field which is the path to your chrome.exe binary. At the end of the line append the parameter –enable-sync-extensions.

Open Chrome through the newly modified shortcut link and access Chrome’s Options through the Wrench icon in the upper right corner of the browser. Under the Personal tab you can Customize.. what exactly get’s synced.

Place a check next to Extensions or any other option you wished to be synchronized across Chrome installs.