Remove Chrome Without Losing Saved Passwords

Google's uninstall instructions for Chrome on Mac have two parts, and the second one is labelled optional. Quit Chrome, drag it from Applications to the Trash, and then, optionally, delete your profile information.

That word is doing a lot of work. Whether it is optional depends entirely on something Google's page does not know: whether you were signed in.

Signed in and signed out are different uninstalls

If you were signed into Chrome with sync on, your bookmarks, history, passwords, and extensions exist in your Google Account as well as on this Mac. Deleting the local profile costs you nothing you cannot get back by signing in again somewhere else.

If you were not signed in, or sync was off, or you used a separate profile that was never linked to an account, the local profile is the only copy. Passwords saved in that profile exist nowhere else.

Google also notes the other direction: signing out and deleting locally does not remove what is already on Google's servers. Local deletion and account deletion are two different jobs, and doing one does not do the other.

Where the profile lives

Google names the location:

~/Library/Application Support/Google/Chrome

Inside it, each profile is its own directory: Default for the first one, then Profile 1, Profile 2, and so on. The names in Chrome's profile switcher do not appear here, so the folder that belongs to a person is not obvious from the outside.

If more than one person used this Mac under one macOS account, treat every numbered profile as someone's data until you have checked.

Export what is only here, first

Before removing anything, open Chrome once more and export what has no server copy. Passwords and bookmarks both export from Chrome's own settings, and both produce a file you can read without Chrome installed. Do this while the app still runs; there is no supported way to read a profile after the app is gone.

If you are moving to another browser rather than clearing the Mac, import from the running Chrome instead. Every major browser reads a live Chrome profile and none of them read a deleted one.

Chrome leaves a background updater

Chrome installs Google's update service, which is shared across Google apps and does not leave with the browser. If Chrome is the only Google app on the machine and you want it gone, that service is a separate removal; if you still use Google Drive or Google Earth, leaving it is correct.

This is why a Mac with Chrome removed sometimes still shows a Google-related login item or a background process. It is not a failed uninstall.

What is safe once the profile decision is made

Caches, code caches, GPU caches, crash reports, and the media cache are large and disposable. On a browser that has been in use for years these are often the biggest items by far, which is why removing Chrome frees more space than people expect and why clearing the caches alone is a reasonable alternative to uninstalling.

Seeing which profile is which

The awkward part is that the folder holding a year of saved passwords and the folder holding a throwaway test profile look identical from Finder, and both are named something like Profile 3.

Mole lists the whole Chrome footprint with each item's size, which is usually enough to tell an abandoned profile from a real one before anything is removed, and sends what you clear to the Trash. That ordering matters more on a browser than on most apps, because the expensive mistake is silent: nothing breaks, a password is simply not there the next time you need it.

Where the password and bookmark exports are

Both live in Chrome's own settings, and there is no supported way to read either once the app is gone, so this happens while it still opens.

Passwords are in the password manager inside Settings, and exporting asks you to confirm your Mac login password first. The export is a plain-text CSV, readable by anyone who can open this Mac, so import it into wherever it is going and then delete the file properly. Do not leave it in Downloads.

Bookmarks export from the menu at the top right of the bookmark manager and produce an HTML file every major browser reads.

If you are switching browsers rather than clearing the Mac, importing directly in the new browser is less work: they read a running Chrome profile, so nothing has to be exported to a file first.