Where are Chrome Extensions Stored

Sometimes you are suspicious about a certain chrome extension being malicious or just curious about the files extracted. This guide will help you to find where chrome extensions are store in Windows 10. When you install any Chrome extension, its files are extracted into the following directory location:

C:\Users\[User_Name]\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default\Extensions

In this directory, each extension will be stored in a single folder named by its ID not by the name.

How to find ID of Chrome extension

Chrome extension IDs are created and signed by Google. They are unique 32 characters which looks like this

gbchcmhmhahfdphkhkmpfmihenigjmpp

This ID refers to Chrome Remote Desktop extension. To find the ID, click on three vertical dots on Chrome browser located in the top right. Click on More Tools to access the Extensions. On the Extensions page, click on Details button and you should see the ID in the URL bar.

Chrome Extension Storage Folder

The ID of extension should be the name of the folder. It is the characters displayed after id= in the URL bar. You can now copy that ID and visit Extensions folder to find the subfolder. Inside the folder, you should be able to find the contents extracted by the specific extension. Most common files inside the chrome extension folder are JS, CSS, HTML and JSON. You can open these files in any Text editor like Notepad or maybe some sophisticated text editors.

View Source Code of Chrome Extension

If you would like to view the source code of an extension before you install it, then there is a great extension that allows you to do so. The Chrome extension source viewer is an extension that allows you to view the source code of any extension that is available from the Chrome Web Store. Once installed, just right click on the extension page and you should see a new context menu called “View Extension Source“. Clicking on it will open the contents of the zip (CRX) file.