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I have a lot of single-page web apps saved as desktop shortcuts in Google Chrome

Menu > More tools > Create shortcut.. > select 'Open as window'

This makes single-page web apps open in its own window with minimal browser chrome, so that they appear and work like independent desktop applications. It's great for things like Dashlane, Facebook Messenger, Twitter, Google Maps, Google Drive, GMail, etc.

As I have quite a lot of these, I would like to save them somewhere so that they can be reused on other computers or after OS reinstallation.

These shortcuts get saved to the desktop, but they still come up in the app list and can still be used once those desktop shortcuts are deleted.

So where are these shortcuts in the filesystem and can they be transferred to other computers?

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    Did you figure it out? I am trying to edit my Google Tasks shortcut to add the necessary arguments to the URL, but I cannot find it Aug 4, 2022 at 20:11

1 Answer 1

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These applications come up in app list as they are also stored at

~/.local/share/applications/

other than desktop.

Chrome Apps are internally consistent with Chrome Extensions, so you will find those app files in

~/.config/google-chrome/Default/Extensions/

where Default is the profile. You will find chrome apps and extensions here with in app-id folders. I believe you can backup this folder to migrate or as a fail-safe, you could backup the whole profile Default.

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  • Thanks. This is useful information, but these shortcuts point to app-id-s, so doing what I am trying to achieve is not going to be so simple. I cannot fine any information on how to migrate these app-ids.
    – paradroid
    Nov 18, 2020 at 20:57
  • @paradroid updated answer. It's not very evident in the question that are asking more than where shortcuts are stored.
    – Amith
    Nov 19, 2020 at 5:27
  • Thanks. These 'extensions' don't appear in chrome://extensions, which would have made backing them up a lot easier. I am currently having a separate problem where Chrome settings are not syncing between computers/OSs, so I am not sure if these 'Chrome Apps' sync with your Google profile. Do they?
    – paradroid
    Nov 19, 2020 at 13:32
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    @paradroid I think Sync only works with Extensions and Apps they provide in their app store. Only the bare bones of it, not the data w.r.t to these extensions.
    – Amith
    Nov 20, 2020 at 7:41
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    This questions still is not answered Aug 4, 2022 at 20:10

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