Importing Tabs and Settings from Chrome

Microsoft

We know the longer youve used a browser, the more it feels like homeYouve set up your browser behavior to your liking and tweaked its various settings to fit your needs. It has all your user data, which helps you fill forms, do your work online, and login to your accounts. And, we know that when you want to try out a new browser, not having access to these features is a big problem. Nobody wants to set up the browser with their data and settings all over again.  

 

One of the major asks for our users coming over from Google Chrome has always been to have the ability to import more – and to have a simple way in the new Microsoft Edge that allows you to continue right where you left off in Google Chrome browser. 

 

Now, we have simplified the process of making your new browser feel like it is truly yoursThe new Microsoft Edge allows the import of user data from Google Chrome, so that its easier than ever to get started.  

 

To import your data from Google Chrome, you need to go toSettings > Profiles > Import browser data  

 

You can also use this URL to quickly navigate to the import dialog: edge://settings/importData 

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In this dialog, select Google Chrome as the source browser and then select the user profile that you want to import from. 

 

Import your browser settings from Google Chrome 

To ensure that the new Microsoft Edge is immediately familiar to you, and works just how you expect your browsers to, weve added the ability to import the browser settings from Google Chrome. 

 

Weve ensured that all the settings which are used most often, help with browser customization, are important for accessibility, or are just critical for the browser to work, are migrated. On the other hand, we do not import settings which depend on online services, or where there is significant difference between the Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge implementations. These settings are left to the new Microsoft Edge defaults. 

 

To see the list of settings that we import from Google Chrome, [see here]. 

 

Import your Open and Pinned tabs from Google Chrome 

Do you self-identify as a “Tab hoarder”? (Confession: I do!) 

For those of us with scores (and more!) of open tabs, one of the major issues with trying out other browsers has always been that we cannot import our open tabs like we can import favorites, passwords and so on.

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Now, you can import your pinned and open tabs from Google Chrome, so that you can continue browsing your collection of important open tabs! 

 

To import your pinned and open tabs from Google Chrome, in the edge://settings/importData view, select Open tabs > Import. This will start the import process, and the imported tabs will be appended to the already open tabs in your active browser window. 

 

Note that on Windows devices, you need to have Google Chrome closed to be able to import the browser tabs. Otherwise the import process isn’t able to read the tab recovery data from Google Chrome. On macOS, you can import open tabs from Google Chrome even if they are open. 

 

Finally, do keep in mind that while you can import hundreds of tabs into the new Microsoft Edge - like all other Chromium based browsers, it can only show 70 of them.  

 

These features will be making their way into the Dev and Beta channels in the coming weeks. If youre on our Canary channel, you should be able to try them out right now! 

 

As always, do let us know if you like these features, or if you have some feedback or issues that you would like to share with us. Send your feedback by using the Smiley button (on the top right of the browser). 

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33 Replies
Like it a lot - THX!
Please add import passwords from .CSV file, it's really useful for not supported browser like Chrome Beta channel.
I have just had a user setup a new laptop and while I convinced him he didn't need to install Chrome this left the difficulty of getting all his Chrome favourites without installing it. A way to sign in and download favourites would be useful.
"Nobody wants to set up the browser with their data and settings all over again. "

True that.

so please make Edge insider to sync all the custom settings we set so we won't have to apply all of our modifications again when we install it on another device.
currently very few settings are synced with "settings sync" option turned on.

@HotCakeX Especially the Flags if possible. I understand it's not easy since Flags change, become standard, new Flags are being introduced etc,  but still it would be great.

 

P.S. The most important thing. Please, keep the browser as un-bloated as you can; especially since you removed 50 completely useless Google services from the browser at the beginning. Don't add 50 Microsoft's services instead. Right now I consider the beta version the best browser out there. Especially when there are Flags like "D3D11on12" and "Turn off caching of streaming media to disk". We'd like to take advantage from all the new cool stuff Win 10 has to  offer ( I don't mean Cortana; just performance wise  ). And funny thing. Edgium doesn't lag anywhere while the original Edge feels somewhat sluggish, like opening a tab, loading a page and more. You would think a clean browser built only for Win 10 would be the second best thing after sliced bread. And this on a 2000 euros PC, not some cheap tablet.          

@Elliot Kirk The import feature is working perfectly for me. I've migrated fully to Edge from Chrome.

@Elliot KirkI have a couple of dozen profiles in Chrome, and it would be great to be able to import all of them in one go with their settings.

Hi @Elliot Kirk - thanks for the great post! We've a quirk in our environment which prevents this feature from working if the default user profile path for Chrome isn't used; resulting in Chrome not appearing in the drop-down list when the Import Browser Data dialog is used. 

 

GP Path: Administrative Templates/Google/Google Chrome

GP name: Set user data directory

Value: ${roaming_app_data}\Google\Chrome\User Data

Reg Path: SOFTWARE\Policies\Google\Chrome

Reg name: UserDataDir

 

If the GP is removed and Chrome is relaunched, as expected a brand new Chrome profile is created in the default directory, and only then after relaunching Edge does it pick up Google Chrome in the list for Import Browser Data. 

 

It would be great (at least for us) if the dialog could check for the existence of the reg key and scan that directory instead.

 

Thanks for your help and keep up the great work!

we need Passwords import from CSV

@jolted131212 


@jolted131212 wrote:
we need Passwords import from CSV

This^ very important

 

there was this option before but i don't know why they removed it.

 

currently there is a flag called:

Password import

Import functionality in password settings. – Mac, Windows

#PasswordImport

 

but it's not working, there is no import option in the password manager.

I wish we could import from non-stable versions of Chrome into Edge too.
so like from Chrome beta to Edge beta, or from Chrome dev to Edge dev.

right now if i am using any version other than Chrome stable, first i have to clean uninstall that, then install stable version, import my data to Edge and then clean uninstall stable again. very redundant steps in the process

That doesn't sound ideal @HotCakeX 

Why not? o.O
I am a PM in the Edge team and love the insights generated here.

@csrswalch, thanks for the heads up on that. I have taken a bug on it for my team.

@HotCakeX, regarding password import from file, can you help me better understand the use case? Where were the passwords exported from?
Hi,
sure. I use Lastpass extension and after Edge insider browsers reaches stable channel, I want to import those passwords into Microsoft Edge and don't rely on the LastPass extension anymore.

so LastPass has the option to export my passwords to a file. now all I need is an Import option to i can import my passwords to the Edge insider.

this option existed a couple of months ago in Edge insider but it's no longer available, even though there is an "import password" flag in latest Edge insider canary.
Thanks!

This seems to be a Chromium change that we have inherited.
https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=1026748&q=PasswordImport&colspec=ID%20Pri%20M%...

Anyway, I have taken this as an item in our backlog and we would be keeping a close watch on this.
Yes but what that means? it means Google can control what features are in Microsoft Edge and what features get removed?
that's a HUGE issue right there.
honestly Microsoft, for their own sake, should fork Chromium and stop Google from interfering.
Hmm....
I wouldn't call it interfering. The new Edge is built on top of Chromium so in essence, it inherits lots of its highs and lows as well. Right now, I would consider it as a bug that many Chromium based browsers ended up getting from the parent codebase. When it will be fixed, we will get the fix as well. Alternately, we will fix this from our side to ensure our users are not impacted.

Either way, now that this is in our backlogs, we will be looking into it.

Also, a merry 2020 to you! :)