Use Chrome browser with Roaming User Profiles
Archived: 2026-04-06 01:26:44 UTC
For administrators who manage Chrome browser on Windows for a business or school.
You can let Microsoft Windows users in your organization create a single Chrome browser profile and reuse it on
each computer they need for work or school. To allow roaming profiles, you turn on Roaming User Profiles for
these users.
When a user signs in to Windows on a computer on your network, Windows copies information from the user’s
roaming user profile to their local computer. When they start Chrome, Chrome uses their roaming profile to
update the local Chrome profile.
A user’s roaming profile contains bookmarks, autofill data, passwords, some browsing history, browser
preferences, and installed extensions. It doesn’t contain information about cookies, browsing sessions, cached or
downloaded files, local browser instance data, or other transient data.
Before you begin
Using Roaming User Profiles changes how your users can use Chrome browser. For example, a user can’t run
Chrome browser sessions on two machines simultaneously. And they can’t synchronize their profiles with Chrome
sync.
Before you turn on Roaming User Profiles, be aware of all the consequences listed in What to tell your users.
Turn on Roaming User Profiles
To turn on the roaming profile option in Chrome browser, enable the RoamingProfileSupportEnabled policy
When you turn on roaming profile support, your users can’t use Chrome cloud sync.
Check if a device uses roaming profiles (optional)
To see if a Windows computer is using Roaming User Profiles, enter chrome://sync-internals in the browser
window on that computer. On the About page, under Local state, find Local Sync Backend Enabled. If it’s true,
then Roaming User Profiles is enabled. Local Backend Path shows the location of the roaming profile file.
Change roaming profile file location (optional)
Information for each user’s roaming profile is kept in a file named profile.pb. By default, this file is located in
%APPDATA%/Google/Chrome. The file can also be stored in %ONEDRIVE%/Google/Chrome by changing
the roaming profile location to OneDrive.
https://support.google.com/chrome/a/answer/7349337
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If you change or redirect the location of this file, be aware of possible effects on synchronization or simultaneous
Chrome browser sessions. See What to tell your users, below.
To set a different location for profile.pb, set the RoamingProfileLocation policy. You can use any of the supported
path variables.
Note: If setting the RoamingProfileLocation policy, do not set either the UserDataDir or the DiskCacheDir policy
to the same directory. Doing so may cause the the local profiles to interfere with roaming profiles and voids the
benefits of the feature.
What to tell your users
Using Roaming User Profiles can affect your users' experience with Chrome in ways they might not expect.
Running Chrome on multiple machines at a time
If your users are familiar with running Chrome browser sessions simultaneously on multiple machines on your
network, Roaming User Profiles can cause behavior they might not expect. We recommend that users never run
simultaneous Chrome sessions when they use Roaming User Profiles.
Related topics
Understand Chrome policy management
Chrome Policy List
Sync your account settings to use Chrome cloud sync instead of Roaming User Profiles
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Source: https://support.google.com/chrome/a/answer/7349337
https://support.google.com/chrome/a/answer/7349337
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