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I've been experimenting with using Chrome DevTools as my primary authoring tool, and am now mostly using them.

As I continue to increase my usage, I'm running into some pain points.

Usually, when I begin working on a project, I now create a dedicated Chrome profile for it. I do this automatically by invoking Chrome with the --user-data-dir flag and storing the browser profile right within the project.

Then I go into the tools, set up my workspace, map my local directories, and so forth. This works great.

What doesn't work so great is that this is a very repetitive process. I'd love to be able to specify the workspace mappings within the project somehow, and then generate the appropriate profile. I'd also love to be able to set other preferences (like indentation, and various other settings on the DevTools "General" page) in a standard way.

I've thought of three ways this might be possible:

  • There might be an API for this, but I doubt it, as programmatic manipulation of browser preferences obviously is disfavored (but would someone have carved out an exception for DevTools?),
  • There might be a way to import/export DevTools preferences, and I might be able to generate the import format,
  • I might be able to figure out where they're stored in the user directory, and manipulate them myself (so far I haven't, though).

There's also one partial solution I've considered:

  • I might be able to copy a "template" browser profile to get some of the shared settings above. Then I'd still have to do the workspace mapping each time, but I might be able to get away with not doing the rest.

One really elaborate strategy I could try would be to use browser automation, as suggested in Google Chrome - how can i programmatically enable chrome://flags some of the modules from disable mode to enabled mode? ... but that seems like overkill even as I start using the stuff more heavily; I don't think I'm quite ready to invest that kind of up-front effort in it.

Is anyone familiar enough with how the Chrome DevTools preferences work to judge which strategies might be most promising?

Community
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David P. Caldwell
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1 Answers1

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There is no way easily sync DevTools settings. They are stored in localstorage scoped to the DevTools. Which means they are in a special sqlite DB which isn't easy to transfer between machines (plus you'd bring all the other stuff with it.)

Sadly, you are left porting this all around by-hand with each new machine.

Garbee
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