Browsers are password managers in their own right. Chrome isn't bad at it, but it can be better.

Chrome allows you to view and manage your passwords without effort but with some security downsides. So, if you are among the newly enlightened, you would like to export your saved passwords to a third-party password manager. You may also want to betray the ranks and go over to another browser.

Don't worry. You can export your passwords with an experimental feature hidden under the browser's hood.

Enable the Experimental Setting

With Chrome, there's a lot that goes behind the scenes. There are many "hidden" experimental features that can be turned on and off like a switch. You can enable or tweak them from Chrome's hidden Flags page. But do know that they can lead to a browser crash. That's why they are experimental!

To access the Flags page, open a Chrome browser window and type chrome://flags in the address bar. To get to the password import-export setting, you can copy-paste chrome://flags/#password-import-export in the address bar and hit Enter. Choose Enabled from the options in the dropdown.

Click on the blue Relaunch Now button at the bottom of the page to restart the browser and make the feature available in the password manager.

Go to Settings > Show advanced settings > Passwords and forms > Manage passwords.

As you can see, the Export and Import buttons are now available. To save all passwords, click on the Export button. You must enter the Windows user account password to start export. Chrome saves your passwords in an Excel comma separated values file.

Now, you can import these passwords into any application that supports CSV files. For instance, this support page describes the import process in LastPass.

You can again disable the password import-export flag and save yourself any potential browser crash in the future.

Do You Save Your Passwords in Chrome?

Chrome shouldn't be your password manager even though the Smart Locks feature has made it better. There are more protective password tools you can try as Google plays catch up.

Is it time to remove the experimental tag from the import-export feature? Which is your password manager of choice on Chrome?

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