Google Chrome is making passwords simpler to download

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Google Chrome password download
Importing to a password manager will be easy.
Photo: Francois Beaufort

Google is making it easier to download all your saved passwords from Chrome. It has long offered the ability to export the data, but the process has been complicated and cumbersome. That’s going to change “soon” with a new export system.

Saving your login passwords in Chrome means you never have to worry about entering them every time you visit your favorite websites. And when you login to Chrome on a new device, all your passwords are synced over. But what if you need those passwords elsewhere?

If you decide you want to change browsers, or you want to store all your logins in a password manager, you need to get that data out of Chrome. A future update is going to make this process a lot simpler.

Chrome makes password downloads easy

“We’ll soon be able to export all our passwords saved in Chrome in a text (.csv) file so that you can import them easily in another password manager,” confirms Chrome evangelist Francois Beaufort on Google+.

There is no timeframe for the update yet, but you can try the new feature early on a Chrome OS device by accessing the developer channel. You can do this within Chrome’s settings menu by clicking Detailed build information under About Chrome OS, then selecting Channel.

“If you don’t want to wait, switch to Dev Channel, search for ‘passwords’ in Chrome Settings, look for the 3-dot menu ‘Saved Passwords’ and click ‘Export passwords…’,” Beaufort explains.

Once you have all your passwords saved in a .csv file, you can easily import them into a password manager and use them anywhere. We recommend Dashlane, the official password manager of Cult of Mac, which offers everything you could possibly need — and more.

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