Changing Chrome User Data location

By default, Google Chrome on Windows stores all its data in:

C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data

This folder seems to top around 2.5 GB, as I tested both in Chrome and Brave.

When digging the portable version of Brave, I found that it uses the --user-data-dir command line switch to store the data somewhere else – that’s the whole point of being portable.

This command line switch, obviously, belongs to Chromium, and so to all its derivative browsers, like Chrome itself. Therefore, you can move Chrome’s User Data folder to any location. After moving the folder itself, you just have to pass the new location via the --user-data-dir command line switch, as explained in Chromium Docs:

"C:\Program Files (x86)\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe" --user-data-dir=D:\Stuff\ChromeUserData

This finding is also useful because it shows that the whole User Data folder can ba copied to a different computer.

I found a possible Chromium bug, however, when moving User Data to my D:\ drive. When a notification pops-up, clicking it will open another Chrome window, and this new window will point to the original User Data location. Which means native notifications are unusable.