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Chromium is not Google Chrome: Switching
You don't actually know that I've switched to Google Chrome as my primary browser because I've got a bunch of draft posts sitting unpublished. In any case, I have. And now I'm switching to Chromium.
Aren't they the same thing? Apparently not. They install in different directories and can co-exist, which is great. But what if you want to bring all of your Google Chrome settings along? That's a manual process as the import feature is only for Internet Explorer and Firefox. Follow along to do it yourself. It's relatively easy and painless, plus you won't lose anything in your original installation of Google Chrome.
First, you'll need to install Chromium. I recommend grabbing a nightly build that has passed all of its tests, otherwise it's possible Chromium won't even launch. I recommend using the "Chromium nightly updater" as seen on this lifehacker page. It will tell you if the latest build (which is more than just nightly, by the way) has passed all of the tests and also provide a download link for either the zipped version or the installer. (I just grabbed build 2212 installer and it's working fine.)
Next, you'll want to copy your "profile" information over from your Google Chrome directory to your new Chromium directory. On Vista, I found this under "\Users\<me>\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data". I copied the entire "User Data" directory from the Google Chrome directory to the Chromium directory located at "\Users\<me>\AppData\Local\Chromium" after I had erased the "User Data" directory from the Chromium directory. After doing this, launching Chromium launched to the set of tabs I'd just had open on Chrome. Nice. (For XP users, it should be in a similar directory under "\documents and settings"
Finally, if you've made an "application" shortcuts you'll need to modify them. All you have to do is right-click to get properties on the shortcuts and change the path to launch "chrome.exe" from "Google\Chrome" to "Chromium" (click on the screen shot for the full resolution version to see).
That's really all there is to it. I just switched over myself. I noticed that a paste issue was fixed in Google Spreadsheets, which is great (pasting would put a blank cell in above the place where it would paste the data in -- I had to use the copy and paste buttons instead). Unless you are noticing bugs, there aren't a whole lot of reasons to switch over. I was hoping the Chrome beta would be updated more frequently, but the overhead is probably pretty high for that.
Given that Google Chrome is a beta, I don't really see anything to lose by using builds of Chromium that pass all of the tests. If there are issues, though, switching back is just as easy and Google Chrome beta is still installed.
One more note: The above copying of the "User Data" directory can also be used to copy or move a profile to another machine.
Posted by Shane on September 15, 2008 9:20 AM | Permalink
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