How to import / export passwords between Vivaldi and Chrome

[harrisonchu88]

I've just recently started using Vivaldi, and so far I've been pretty impressed. There was only one issue that stuck out to me and I had ignored it for a good while but finally decided to get to the end of resolving it for good!

The issue was, for whatever reason, Vivaldi had not transferred my saved credentials from Chrome. Unfortunately, the native import feature (supposedly grouped together with bookmarks and settings) doesn't populate with Chrome as an option, either. This is just my own speculation, but I've heard Vivaldi runs off of the same Chromium engine, so I suspect that's why it doesn't show itself as a target?

Well, I decided to approach the issue from the other end first: exporting from Chrome settings. A short search comes up with the setting we need to access to accomplish that: chrome://settings/passwords. From there, you can export your saved passwords to a .csv container.

Then, from your Vivaldi browser, navigating to the same link as above will get you to the same settings page respectively. And this was where I got stumped for a bit -- there's no "import" setting anywhere in sight!

After searching Google for a bit longer, I finally came across this article explaining the issue. To summarize for your convenience, all you need to do is go to your flags and enable the Import Passwords feature. Refresh your passwords settings page and lo and behold, Import now shows above Export!

I hope this potentially helps some other users out there whom may not have been as fortunate with their search results as I was.

PS: Don't forget to restart the browser, in case it didn't start working right away!

[Pathduck]

True, they should put it in the documentation pages, or just make the flag enabled by default. New users are sure to ask that question over and over again, and Vivaldi is targeted to more technical users so the option should be on by default.

[Ayespy]

@harrisonchu88 I wonder if your Chrome installation was atypical in some way. Vivaldi is written to detect your Chrome install and offer to import from it.

[harrisonchu88]

@Ayespy I'm not sure if it has any impact or not, but I have Chrome Beta installed rather than the stable release: Version 72.0.3626.77 (Official Build) beta (64-bit).

[Ayespy]

@harrisonchu88 If the install directory name was "Chrome-something" rather than simply "Chrome," that could explain it.

[harrisonchu88]

@Ayespy Good to know!

If that's the case, I'm really surprised there isn't any prompt or setting (from the front-end UI that I could find) for the user to point to a non-standard installation path? Leaving aside the other build releases, my Chrome installation might still be considered "atypical" if Vivaldi was written to search a static location; my OS and C:/ partition are on an M.2 SSD with limited storage capacity, so I install most non-critical software on a separate HDD instead (I assume this is a fairly common practice nowadays).

Is there perhaps any work-around, e.g., such as a human-readable/-accessible .ini file, or regedit etc., that can be modified to point Vivaldi to the correct install path? I'm out of my depth here, but my impression is that a .csv export / import hardly seems secure? It'd likely be a better choice to simply just get Vivaldi to detect the correct installation path.

I'm not knowledgeable about what goes on on the backend so my apologies if it's a foolish question, and thanks for the information!

[Ayespy]

@harrisonchu88 For now, being able to browse to the desired directory is not available. But that would be the next step.

[Para-Noid]

Try downloading as a HTML file then upload to Vivaldi via Menu>Bookmarks>Import Bookmarks

[harrisonchu88]

@Para-Noid If I'm wrong someone can correct me on this, but I believe Chrome doesn't have any method to export as .html natively (you'd have to use something like ChromePass). Even then, it looks like when you import from just an .html file it only imports bookmarks, not passwords.

@Gwen-Dragon I believe the bookmark function is being brought up because the dialogue window does include password import, but only for some of the options.

[Pesala]

@Gwen-Dragon On Windows there is an option to import Passwords from Chrome.

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[Ayespy]

@Pesala Yes, but only if Vivaldi detects Chrome on the machine, which it may not for an atypical install.

[Pathduck]

Could probably use junction links to trick Vivaldi into recognizing a non-standard Chrome install path.

But it's not for the faint of heart

I would definitely delete the link after import since you never know when Chrome gets installed anyway by some sneaky method, and nuke your Vivaldi profile...

mkdir %LOCALAPPDATA%\Google\Chrome
mklink /J "%LOCALAPPDATA%\Google\Chrome\User Data" "<Alternate chrome install path>"

[harrisonchu88]

@Pathduck That's the same as a "symbolic link", right?

Actually, for a work-around couldn't someone write an .ahk or .bat script that sets up the redirection, runs the import, then closes it immediately after? No install nightmares that way, whether it be surreptitious or accidental

[Pathduck]

@harrisonchu88 said in How to import / export passwords between Vivaldi and Chrome:

@Pathduck That's the same as a "symbolic link", right?

Yep, junction links are basically the same as symlinks. It's safe to delete the link itself, it will not delete the target.
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/administration/windows-commands/mklink
https://www.howtogeek.com/howto/16226/complete-guide-to-symbolic-links-symlinks-on-windows-or-linux/

Actually, for a work-around couldn't someone write an .ahk or .bat script that sets up the redirection, runs the import, then closes it immediately after? No install nightmares that way, whether it be surreptitious or accidental

Well, automating the creation of the link is not hard, but I'm not even sure if it's possible to automate the import in Vivaldi. There'd need to be some kind of command line option, to specify what browser to import from and so on.

Unless one wants to go the route of writing a AHK script, yes it's possible - but that would be in a whole another ballgame. I think for cost of time versus actual use, it would not be worth it... IMO

[Para-Noid]

@harrisonchu88 Yeah, you're right. Chrome does not allow the user to export bookmarks as html or otherwise. It's been about three months since I last opened Chrome. Didn't Chrome allow the export of bookmarks as html at one time?

[Ayespy]

@Para-Noid said in How to import / export passwords between Vivaldi and Chrome:

Chrome does not allow the user to export bookmarks as html or otherwise.

Actually, it does. HTML is how it exports them.

[KenjiSan]

Vivaldi running on the Linux OS does not auto-import your passwords from Chrome when you set it up. This is good information about how to do it manually. Many Thanks!

[godly75]

Hi fellows,
I tried this solution, the flag is active, but no import available.

When I go to vivaldi://settings/passwords/ I get to the first settings screen and in the passwords page, it doesn't appear either.
Alle users are imported but the passwords are empty, when I make the password field readable it appears to be empty

I'm on 3.0.1874.38 (Stable channel) (64-bit)

I restarted already several times. Even tried the shortcut solution.
Please help me get my passwords back, it's pretty useless otherwise.

Update:

I was able to find the settings page by going to chrome:// rather than vivaldi://
There I have the improt function now. But... Nothing happens when I import and they are also empty

UPDATE: it worked, but now it's all double :D, the empty and the filled ones
and ctrl+shift+del > delete passwords doesn't affect...