Audion Chrome Portable - user guide
Audion Chrome Portable - user guide
Contents
- How the window works
- First run
- What is inside the build
- Updating
- The certificate block
- Build settings
This program makes a portable Google Chrome: it lives in a folder, starts from anywhere, and is never installed into Windows. Bookmarks, passwords and tabs stay inside that folder. It does not disturb an installed Chrome — both can be open at the same time.
How the window works
Four tabs across the top: INSTALL, UPDATE, CERTIFICATE, SERVICE. That is the whole menu: press a tab and its commands, with their settings, are right underneath. Above the tabs sits a service strip with the folder cleanups, which belong to the program as a whole.
Choices are made with buttons — the chosen one washed with blue, the rest outlined. Captions are short; the explanation appears in the tooltip when the pointer rests on a button or a checkbox.
First run
- Tab
SERVICE→7-ZIP. The installer cannot be unpacked without it. - Tab
INSTALL→BUILD.
About 120 MB is downloaded. The finished build appears in the Target folder (output\Portable\Google Chrome Portable); start it with Google Chrome Portable.cmd in its root.
What is inside the build
| Folder or file | What it is |
|---|---|
App | The browser itself. Replaced wholesale on update. |
Data | Your profile: bookmarks, passwords, tabs, extensions. |
Cache | Cache. Safe to delete. |
Certificates | The Ministry of Digital Development certificates and two files: install and remove. |
Google Chrome Portable.cmd | Starts the browser. |
Portable-Build.json | Which versions are inside. |
Updating
The UPDATE tab.
CHECK reads the published Chrome version and shows it next to the version of your build. The installer is not downloaded for this.
UPDATE replaces only the browser inside the build: Data and Cache are kept, so the profile stays.
The update happens where the build lies. Point Source at its folder — a flash drive, a network share, wherever it lives — and it is updated in place. Nothing has to be copied, and the Target folder is not used here: that one is for new builds. With nothing in Source, the program looks in output\Portable.
CHROME++ refreshes the wrapper alone — 180 KB. It is released more often than Chrome itself, and the browser and the profile are left untouched.
The certificate block
Russian state sites are signed by an authority Windows does not trust out of the box, so such a site opens with a security warning. The steps are separate so that nothing happens by itself. They all live on the CERTIFICATE tab.
INTO THE BUILD. Downloads both certificates into the build folder along with Install-Russian-Trusted-CA.cmd and Uninstall-Russian-Trusted-CA.cmd. No trust is added — these are files, and they can be handed over with the build.
INSTALL. Adds the certificates to your own Windows account's store, which Chrome reads. No administrator rights are needed and other users of the machine see no change. The Install-Russian-Trusted-CA.cmd file in the build does the same thing.
REVOKE. Removes exactly those two certificates — by fingerprint rather than by name, so nothing else is touched.
CHECK shows whether they are installed and changes nothing.
Worth understanding: a certificate cannot be kept "in the browser's folder only". Chrome on Windows reads the user's store, not a file beside itself. That is why trust is a separate decision — and always reversible.
Yandex Browser needs none of this: it trusts that CA out of the box. It has its own program — Audion Yandex Portable.
Build settings
State site certificates. On. Places the files and two shortcuts into the build. Installs nothing.
Leave no traces in Windows. Off, deliberately: with it on, Chrome wipes HKCU\Software\Google\Chrome when it exits, and that branch is shared with an installed Chrome, which is present almost everywhere. Turn it on only on a machine without one.
Pack into an archive. Turn it on when the build is to be handed over: one file instead of a folder. The format sits next to it — ZIP opens anywhere, 7Z is smaller but needs 7-Zip on the other side.
Portability. What keeps the profile inside the build folder. CHROME++ is the wrapper this program started with: its version.dll goes next to the browser. PROXY LIBRARY is another wrapper of the same kind, by neyrostalker: it does the same job, additionally blocks writes to the registry, and Microsoft's antivirus does not treat it as a threat. The differences and the check results are in docs/CHROME_PLUS_AND_DEFENDER.md.
Wrapper architecture. Leave it at X64 — that is what the Chrome installer is.
Keep working files (under Advanced). The download and the unpacked installer stay in workspace — useful when a build failed and the reason has to be found.