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My problem has continued for years on my laptop. I have installed Lubuntu (for years), Pop_OS (last year), and now for about a month generic Ubuntu 24.04, carrying always home-partition. Because I have a long history of sites in Chromium (cookies, passwords, etc), I have not tried to start Chromium from a clean slate, even cleaning all cookies seems to lead to too many complications, so I have avoided it at all cost.

It began one day when I had to log in to Chromium to my Google account and it failed when I used autofilled email and password. It was weird so I tried again and again until I let it show the saved password and it revealed like this (sorry for the Estonian screenshot, I hope it is still pretty much intelligible, the beginning of the email and password are scrambled for security):

google login screenshot

The password is shown as some random bytes. My actual password is long (but shown password is still about twice as long) and contains alphanumeric characters, so it has no resemblance with the one on the screenshot (except the first character, that's why I scrambled the first characters on the picture).

When I enter the right password it logs me in, but some half-way, it still shows "Not signed in" and "Turn on sync"

profile image

But for a while it actually works: I can later access the results of my browsing (history, saved passwords, etc) on other devices. I can watch Youtube from my account and it all lasts for some time. I am not sure about the longevity, it seems that when I actively do something on my Google account (like watching Youtube, for example) I stay logged in, but after some inactive time I have to log in again. And it becomes very annoying.

So I have tried some times to solve my problem, Googled many times. I have tried:

  • set "Allow third-party cookies"
  • set "Allow Chromium sign-in" and disable and set
  • set "Allow sites to save data on your device"
  • removed saved user/password from saved passwords. Now I don't see this scrambled sequence anymore, but Chromium does not offer to save my password neither does not use one I added myself into the manager.

I have not:

I have no other Google-profiles under my system user/account.

I'd like to not remove my conf/cookies unless it is absolutely necessary, I still hope someone has a solution for my situation. Besides "why" stated in the title I am certainly interested in fixing too.

Edit

Added chrome://signin-internals/ screen. Is here something wrong?

signin-internals

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  • Your approach irks me a little... I fear sooner or later you'll lose your configs and if you have my luck, it'll be at the most inopportune time.. Do you have a secondary PC? as I'd copy your config there & experiment.. I use a number of machines, and have been able to migrate my browser config from one machine to another as its just files on disk.. from my primary Ubuntu PC to different Ubuntu system, to Debian, to Fedora/OpenSuSE & elsewhere.. I don't signin to online google etc, but manage my browser myself at file level.. Your pic makes me think you're missing a font file though
    – guiverc
    Commented Jul 2 at 2:49
  • @guiverc If it would the missing font, the freshly inputted password should be shown also scrambled. It is not. Sooner or later we may loose everything, I have heard that even our life is not forever ;) Of course, config is a directory of files and experimenting with these is possibility. Here I am making a bit of groundwork before it.
    – wk.
    Commented Jul 2 at 11:09
  • square box with question mark is one of the characters that can be used when a character (in fontfile) isn't found matching what was looked for... thus that comment. If you've re-installed as you said; your later re-installs may have missed a package (font etc) that the prior install had causing later installs to act as you describe with graphic glitches instead of perfect text a clue..
    – guiverc
    Commented Jul 2 at 11:13
  • @guiverc Thank you for input. Over the reinstalls the problem remains. As password was shown wrong on the first case (not after install) it was shown wrong yesterday. If it would missing font it would still accept the scambled sequence as correct password, because missing font does nothing to input info. It may displayed wrong but it remains same characters, always. As we talk of standard text/password input, there is possible to set it use some cumbersome font, but A) I don't mangle with fonts (additionally install mscorefonts, thats all) B) i don't experiment with browser's basic styles
    – wk.
    Commented Jul 2 at 11:51
  • You specifically mention not removing the "whole config-directory", thus your config on whatever system you had first may have included something (font etc) that doesn't exist in later setups.. leading to what I suggested.. I don't know what your issue is, I've seen something like it myself (that may or may not be same or a similar thing) but yes I'd expect missing fonts to not impact logged in or normal operation (network issues are more likely a problem for that issue; iffy/faulty switch etc on network) or bad extension issue (I've had issues with extensions myself)
    – guiverc
    Commented Jul 2 at 12:16

1 Answer 1

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+150

I do not think there is much that you can do.

https://blog.chromium.org/2021/01/limiting-private-api-availability-in.html

Chromium no longer supports the Google Sync API.

Sync Chromium with a Google account does not work any more … solutions?

There are some workarounds that various people have been able to get to work. You might find an answer here: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/67459316/enabling-chromium-to-sync-with-google-account#:~:text=Google%20announced%20that%20from%20March,with%20a%20Google%20Account.

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