A couple of years ago, I abandoned Google Chrome in favor of Vivaldi’s then recent browser (a relative of my old favorite Opera). With each new update Chrome was becoming heavier and heavier, although its productivity features remained top-notch. Vivaldi is Chromium-based, but much more lightweight, definitely two birds with one stone. History repeats itself, Vivaldi itself starts to become bulky, so it is time to switch again. This time, I opt for Microsoft Edge, since it makes sense to use the native browser that is optimized for the computer’s operating software. The new Edge is also Chromium-based, provides syncing options through linking an MS account and allows extension installation through Chrome Web Store. But the switch doesn’t go as planned.
In the past, I was able to enable a Chrome flag that allowed password import, additional to the default export option. This flag was missing from Edge, so even though I prepared a password .csv file from Vivaldi, it was unusable. The import tab in Edge allowed import from only Edge Legacy and Internet Explorer, as well as from an .html file specifically for bookmarks. Eventually, I had to come up with a workaround to manage the import.
The steps for importing a .csv password file in MS Edge are outlined below. First, you have to link your Edge session to some MS account, through the ‘Sign in’ or ‘Add profile’ buttons that appear after you click the profile icon next to the three dot icon in the top right corner on Edge. Then you need to download and install Edge Canary Channel, a developer version with daily updates, from the official website. After installing Canary Edge, sign in with the same profile that you used in plain Edge. Next, you need to enable the password import flag by clicking Enable in the menu hat appears after pasting edge://flags/#PasswordImport in the address bar. Now that the flag is enabled, the import button appears in the menu. Visit the address edge://settings/passwords and the three dots icon next to ‘Passwords’ pane will show an import passwords option. Use the option to browse to the location of your saved password .csv file and the voila! If you now switch to regular Edge window and navigate to edge://settings/passwords you will see that the newly imported passwords are reflected correctly.
This was it, now I only have to import the bookmarks file, install some useful extensions and the browser switch is all done. Did you find this information useful? How do you usually handle password transfers from one browser to another? Which is your favorite browser? Tell me about it in the comments below!
