chromium-session

Parse and analyze session files from Chromium-based browsers (Chrome, Vivaldi, Brave, Edge) with support for workspaces, profiles, bookmarks, history, and tab management.

Features

• 🔍 Auto-detection: Automatically finds and uses the most recently modified session
• 🌐 Multi-browser support: Chrome, Vivaldi, Brave, Edge, Opera, Arc, and more
• 👤 Profile detection: Automatically detects and lists all browser profiles
• 📁 Workspace support: Parse Vivaldi workspaces and group tabs accordingly
• 📊 Session analysis: View active/deleted tabs, windows, and session statistics
• 💾 Multiple export formats: Rich terminal display, JSON, or CSV export
• 🔖 Bookmarks parser: View bookmarks with folder structure
• 📜 History parser: Browse browsing history with search and filtering
• 🗂️ Tab organization: Reorganize tabs by domain or title and write back to session files

Installation

From PyPI (Coming Soon)

pip install chromium-session

Using uv (recommended)

uv pip install chromium-session

From Source

git clone https://github.com/Asseel-Naji/chromium-session.git
cd chromium-session
uv pip install -e .

Requirements

• Python 3.12+
• Linux (primary support)
• Chromium-based browser(s) installed

Usage

Quick Start with Auto-Detection

All commands support auto-detection - just omit the browser parameter:

# Automatically detects and uses the most recent session
chromium-session summary
chromium-session parse
chromium-session bookmarks
chromium-session history --limit 20

List Detected Browsers

Show all detected Chromium-based browsers and their profiles:

chromium-session list

Example output:

                               Detected Browsers
┏━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━┓
┃ ID            ┃ Name           ┃ Profiles                         ┃ Sessions ┃
┡━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━┩
│ chrome        │ Google Chrome  │ Default                          │ 1/1      │
│ vivaldi       │ Vivaldi        │ Default, Profile 2, Profile 4    │ 5/5      │
│ brave         │ Brave          │ Default                          │ 1/1      │
│ edge          │ Microsoft Edge │ Default                          │ 1/1      │
└───────────────┴────────────────┴──────────────────────────────────┴──────────┘

List Browser Profiles

Show all profiles for a specific browser:

chromium-session profiles vivaldi

View Session Summary

Get a quick overview of tabs and windows:

chromium-session summary vivaldi

Example output:

Vivaldi / Default
Session: Session_13402871234567

┏━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━┓
┃ Metric      ┃ Value ┃
┡━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━┩
│ Total tabs  │ 127   │
│ Active tabs │ 115   │
│ Deleted tabs│ 12    │
│ Windows     │ 3     │
└─────────────┴───────┘

                 Tabs by Workspace
┏━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┓
┃ Workspace          ┃                       Tabs ┃
┡━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┩
│ Work               │                         42 │
│ Research           │                         38 │
│ Personal           │                         35 │
│ No Workspace       │                         12 │
└────────────────────┴────────────────────────────┘

Parse Session Files

Parse and display all tabs in the latest session:

# Parse latest session (default)
chromium-session parse vivaldi

# Parse specific profile
chromium-session parse vivaldi --profile "Default"

# Parse multiple recent sessions
chromium-session parse vivaldi --latest 3

# Show deleted tabs as well
chromium-session parse vivaldi --show-deleted

# Group tabs by workspace (Vivaldi)
chromium-session parse vivaldi --by-workspace

List Workspaces (Vivaldi)

Show all defined workspaces:

chromium-session workspaces vivaldi

Example output:

        Workspaces in Vivaldi / Default
┏━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━┓
┃ Emoji ┃ Name                 ┃ ID         ┃
┡━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━┩
│ 💼    │ Work                 │ 1          │
│ 🔬    │ Research             │ 2          │
│ 🏠    │ Personal             │ 3          │
└───────┴──────────────────────┴────────────┘

Browse Bookmarks

Display bookmarks with folder structure:

# Auto-detect browser
chromium-session bookmarks

# Specific browser
chromium-session bookmarks --browser chrome

# Export as JSON
chromium-session bookmarks --json > bookmarks.json

Browse History

View browsing history with search and filtering:

# Show last 50 entries (default)
chromium-session history

# Search for specific term
chromium-session history --search "python"

# Filter by domain
chromium-session history --domain "github.com"

# Limit results
chromium-session history --limit 100

# Export as JSON
chromium-session history --json > history.json

Organize Tabs

Reorganize tabs by domain or title and write back to session files:

# Organize by domain (preview)
chromium-session organize --by-domain --dry-run

# Organize by domain (apply)
chromium-session organize --by-domain

# Sort alphabetically by title
chromium-session organize --by-title

# Organize specific browser
chromium-session organize --browser vivaldi --by-domain

Note: Automatic backup is created before modifying session files.

CSV Export

Export session data to CSV format:

# Export to CSV
chromium-session parse --csv > sessions.csv

# Include deleted tabs
chromium-session parse --csv --show-deleted > all_tabs.csv

JSON Output

Export session data as JSON:

# Export session data
chromium-session parse vivaldi --json > session.json

# Export workspaces
chromium-session workspaces vivaldi --json > workspaces.json

Command Reference

Global Options

Commands

list

List all detected Chromium-based browsers.

chromium-session list

profiles <browser>

List all profiles for a specific browser.

chromium-session profiles vivaldi

Arguments:

• browser: Browser ID (e.g., chrome, vivaldi, brave, edge)

summary <browser>

Show quick summary statistics for the latest session.

chromium-session summary vivaldi [OPTIONS]

Arguments:

• browser: Browser ID

Options:

• --profile, -p: Specific profile name

parse <browser>

Parse and display session files.

chromium-session parse vivaldi [OPTIONS]

Arguments:

• browser: Browser ID

Options:

• --profile, -p: Specific profile name
• --latest, -n: Number of recent sessions to parse (default: 1)
• --json, -j: Output as JSON
• --show-deleted: Include deleted tabs and windows
• --by-workspace, -W: Group tabs by workspace (Vivaldi only)

workspaces <browser>

List defined workspaces (Vivaldi only).

chromium-session workspaces vivaldi [OPTIONS]

Arguments:

• browser: Browser ID

Options:

• --profile, -p: Specific profile name
• --json, -j: Output as JSON

Use Cases

Session Recovery

Recover tabs after a browser crash:

# View all tabs from the latest session
chromium-session parse vivaldi --show-deleted

# Export to JSON for processing
chromium-session parse vivaldi --json > crashed-session.json

Tab Management

Analyze your browsing habits:

# See how many tabs you have per workspace
chromium-session summary vivaldi

# Find specific tabs
chromium-session parse vivaldi --json | jq '.windows[].tabs[] | select(.title | contains("Python"))'

Multi-Profile Management

Work with multiple browser profiles:

# List all profiles
chromium-session profiles vivaldi

# Parse specific profile
chromium-session parse vivaldi --profile "Work"

Browser Support

Running as a Module

You can also run the package as a Python module:

python -m chromium_session list

Development

Setup Development Environment

git clone https://github.com/yourusername/chromium-session.git
cd chromium-session
uv venv
source .venv/bin/activate
uv pip install -e .

Project Structure

chromium-session/
├── src/
│   └── chromium_session/
│       ├── __init__.py
│       ├── __main__.py      # Module entry point
│       ├── cli.py           # Typer CLI interface
│       ├── parser.py        # Session file parser
│       └── browsers.py      # Browser detection logic
├── pyproject.toml
└── README.md

Troubleshooting

No browsers detected

Problem: chromium-session list shows no browsers.

Solution: Ensure you have at least one Chromium-based browser installed in the default location:

• Chrome: ~/.config/google-chrome/
• Vivaldi: ~/.config/vivaldi/
• Brave: ~/.config/BraveSoftware/Brave-Browser/
• Edge: ~/.config/microsoft-edge/

Session files not found

Problem: Browser is detected but sessions show 0/N.

Solution: The browser must have been run at least once. Session files are created in:

<browser-config-dir>/<profile>/Sessions/

Import errors after moving project

Problem: python -m chromium_session fails with import errors.

Solution: Reinstall the package in the new location:

uv pip install -e .

License

MIT License - See LICENSE file for details.

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Please feel free to submit a Pull Request.

1. Fork the repository
2. Create your feature branch (git checkout -b feature/amazing-feature)
3. Commit your changes (git commit -m 'Add some amazing feature')
4. Push to the branch (git push origin feature/amazing-feature)
5. Open a Pull Request

Author

Asseel Naji

Acknowledgments

• Built with Typer for the CLI
• Rich for beautiful terminal output