Chrome missing from Cache Relocator list
6 posts
A question about Cache Relocator 1.9 rather than RAM Disk.
I used Cache Relocator to move the browser caches for Brave, Firefox & Edge to a licensed SoftPerfect RAM Disk. I'd like to do the same for Chrome, but for some reason Chrome isn't showing up in the Cache Relocator list on one Windows 11 PC. It works fine (Chrome is listed) on other (Win10) PCs I'm using. I've tried running Cache Relocator normally and as admin - same behavior.
I could go to the trouble of creating a batch script to make the same Shortcut/Alias change for Chrome, but it's nicer to have it all done by the same Cache Relocator app.
Cache Relocator detects Chrome by looking for its cache folder at
C:\Users\<user>\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default\Cache
As your Brave, Edge and Firefox are all detected normally, the issue seems to be specific to Chrome's data location on that PC.
To find out where Chrome is actually storing its data in your case, please type
chrome://version
in Chrome's address bar and check the Profile Path line. If it doesn't start with the above path, it would explain why Cache Relocator can't find it.
Another thing to check is your Chrome shortcut: right-click it, select Properties, and look at the Target field. If it contains a
--user-data-dir=
parameter, Chrome is using a custom data location instead of the default one.
Please let us know your findings.
Thanks. Requested info is below.
Maybe the odd "\y_kpaoync\" intermediate path is messing up Cache Relocator's ability to find Google's info.
Here in C:\Users\andreww\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome I find both \y_kpaoync and \User Data directories. So it looks like the profile is using the funny one in this case.
From inside Chrome, chrome://version/ wrote:
Google Chrome 147.0.7727.102 (Official Build) (64-bit) (cohort: Stable)
OS Windows 11 Version 25H2 (Build 26200.8246)
JavaScript V8 14.7.173.19
User Agent Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/147.0.0.0 Safari/537.36
Command Line "C:\Program Files\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe" --flag-switches-begin --flag-switches-end --origin-trial-disabled-features=CanvasTextNg|WebAssemblyCustomDescriptors
Executable Path C:\Program Files\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe
Profile Path C:\Users\andreww\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\y_kpaoync\Default
From Windows11 Start Menu wrote:
Google Chrome item, right-click Properties:
Target: "C:\Program Files\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe"
Start in: "C:\Program Files\Google\Chrome\Application"
Thank you for providing the detailed information. The "y_kpaoync" directory (it can also be any string or random of characters on other computers) is indeed the cause of the problem. Chrome is using it instead of the standard "User Data" folder to store your profile data, which is why Cache Relocator couldn't find it.
We weren't able to determine exactly what causes Chrome to use a randomised directory name on some PCs. It does not appear to be documented by Google, and the open-source Chromium code still references "User Data" as the standard name. It may be a change in Google's proprietary Chrome code being gradually rolled out to some users, possibly as a security measure against malware that targets the well-known path.
In any case, we have updated Cache Relocator to handle this. Its latest version now automatically detects browser profiles in non-standard directories like that one, so Chrome should appear in the list regardless of the directory name used.
Wow, thank you. I'm impressed by your quick diagnosis & fix (new version of your free software), as well as the complete lack of finger-pointing -- you just came up with a solution to fix something that you didn't cause (to be fair, I didn't either :-)) due to whatever weird and undocumented thing Google is doing.
I checked the new 26.4 version of Cache Relocator: all is OK for Brave, Chrome, Edge, Firefox, Opera and assorted non-browsers.