Portable variant of Edge-Chromium

Brass Contributor

Would it be possible to create an official portable version of Edge-Chromium that is fully self contained and can be run from any location including external storage such as a USB flash drive? 

 

The portable variant should not write any files/folders or leave any trace on the main "system drive" or elsewhere other than the designated portable folder. There currently is an unofficial portable version of Google chrome available from portableapps.com however, folders are created in the main "system drive\AppData" location despite initiating using switches such as "--user-data-dir=" and "--disk-cache-dir=" instructing chrome otherwise.

 

The folders created are "C:\Users\X\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data\Crashpad" and "C:\Users\X\AppData\Local\Temp\GoogleChromePortable"

 

Additional files and folders are also created in system drive\AppData\Local\ depending on the usage of the browser.

 

I believe Opera offers an official portable version that is fully self contained, so it executes, caches data and installs extensions in a specific portable folder ONLY without writing anything to the "system drive" or elsewhere although, I believe when updating, files are temporarily written to the main system disk.

 

I understand that chromium has its limitations such that settings and extensions per profile are tied to a specific computer, so if one was to copy/install the portable directory to a USB stick, insert into a different computer and execute, expecting it to retain the aforementioned parameters, it does not. This appears to be a deliberate design function however, one can create a Google account and sync their settings thus retain the parameters. Similarly, I would imagine that synchronising settings using a Microsoft account is required in Edge-Chromium.

 

If Microsoft could offer a variant that can override this behaviour and retain the settings between different machines (similar to the unofficial Firefox Portable) that would be a huge leap ahead of the rest of the chromium based competition however, a fully self contained, proper portable browser would be perfect at this stage.

 

Kind Regards

5 Replies

I would like a portable version too, maybe not for installation on flash drive, but so that I can make an app manifest for a windows package manager.

The self extracting .exe's and glittery installers of yesteryear are very tiresome.

I would love to have portable version of Edge-Chromium since I might not always have Administrator or required privilege to install software on my work place

@random_user 
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:thumbs_up: I began searching for the very same solution a moment ago, that is, a portable form of Edge-chromium, and, even though it's now a year later, I've only found your well written and accurate appeal.

In thinking about this, I'm left wondering why several of the most popular browsers make being portable so difficult. Is there some complex security risks to keeping user info portable, per chance. Or is it just simply once less version for them to have to worry about.






Count me in on this one. I would love to have a portable version of Edge.

 

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