Can I change the icon used to identify profiles in Google Chrome web browser?

Question

I'd like to make the profile icons in chrome more meaningful.

E.g. a pic of the profile's user, my company's logo for my work profile.

Edit: I've changed the accepted answer to reflect application updates.

Answer 1

This worked for me:

1. Quit Chrome (ensure you don't have any running).
2. Find the Chrome application directory (e.g., on Windows, it is %USERPROFILE%\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data, on Mac it's ~/Library/Application Support/Google/Chrome/).
3. Put your new avatar png file into the "Default" subdirectory.
4. Edit the "Local State" file in a good text editor.

5. Find the "profile" section; it resembles this:

      "profile": {
         "info_cache": {
            "Default": {
               "avatar_icon": "chrome://theme/IDR_PROFILE_AVATAR_7",
   

6. Ignore the "avatar_icon" line - it's not what you want!

7. Edit the "Default" profile section and add the following lines (I put them in the right alphabetical order amongst the other lines; I'm not sure whether that matters):

               "gaia_picture_file_name": "your-icon-file-name.png",
            "has_migrated_to_gaia_info": true,
            "use_gaia_picture": true,

8. Save the "Local State" file.

9. Start Chrome.

If you want to do this for other profiles, just do the above steps for a different directory besides "Default" (for example, "Profile 1").

You may want to star the Chrome issue 91230 http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=91230 to get a proper UI for this type of thing again.

(I also answered this at How do I access/edit the Chrome user avatar images? on Super User.)

Answer 2

This is not possible in current versions of Google Chrome or Chromium.

The Chromium issue tracker has a ticket for adding this feature, which you can follow:

• Issue 91230: Multi-Profiles: Add support for custom avatar

Answer 3

I just found a "non-hacky" way to fix this...

1. Click on the profile name at the top of the browser window.
2. Select the profile picture, the chrome settings page will appear with a list of avatars to choose from. Close this.
3. From the list of profiles, select the one labeled "Current". Note: this only works for the profile currently active.
4. Click "Edit". Your Google Profile Image should appear at the beginning of the list.
5. Switch profiles and repeat.

---

Chrome: Version 47.0.2526.106 m

OS: Windows 10 Pro

Answer 4

Changing your profile icon is possible with the solution given at https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=91230#c43 with several limitations.

Method

1. Quit chrome, or kill it with task manager to be sure it's closed.
2. Open a command prompt or Start Menu->Run
3. Run the command: chrome --gaia-profile-info

Limitations

1. You can only change the primary profile icon with this method, not other profiles.
2. This method sets your profile icon to match your Google Account profile picture, so you must set your profile picture to the desired icon before-hand.

Hopefully the Chrome team will add proper support for this in the future.

Answer 5

Some of the answers are out of date or more complex than they need to be. Presumably Chrome has added some functionality since the question was asked.

As of June 2018:

First, check that a picture is associated with your Google account. Open GMail and see if a picture appears in the top right. If one shows up, you're good to go.

If you don't have a picture associated with your Google account:

1. Open Gmail
2. In the top right, click Settings
3. In the "My Picture" section, click Change picture

Note: Changing your picture in GMail affects your entire account. This is just a convenient place to do it.

Note: If you have a GMail contact for yourself, any picture attached to that contact may override the picture you see in GMail. It's worth checking to see if you have such a contact, and whether that contact uses the same picture.

To change your image in Chrome, once you have an account picture:

1. Open Chrome settings (Navigate to chrome://settings/ or via the menu)
2. Click the user icon near the top left of the page (to the left of your account name)
3. Select your account image if exists there

If your account image wasn't available, fear not. It just needs to be synced from Google.

1. From the main settings page click "Sign Out"
2. Do not choose to delete your data.
3. Sign in again.

Your current account image will be synced. Repeat the steps in the previous section and enjoy your icon.

Answer 6

The following command works on Mac OS 10.7.5:

"/Applications/Google Chrome.app/Contents/MacOS/Google Chrome" --gaia-profile-info

Answer 7

This is just to replace with the Google account image, but is what most people want I guess and is very easy to do.

Tested in Chromium 40.0 and Google Chrome 40.0 in Linux.

• Change the old left-corner user avatar icon with a name-menu in the right corner by going to

chrome://flags/#enable-new-avatar-menu

set to 'enabled' and restart browser.

• Then repeat that, and setting to 'disabled', the avatar emoticon is replaced with the Google account image automatically, or that image is available in Settings>People>Edit user.

Answer 8

This worked for me. Select your account, then Syncing to (your email address), and Manage your Google Account, you can change your profile picture there. To get the new image to display on the task bar, select Syncing to again, and turn sync off and on.

Answer 9

For me, the issue was not being able to Quickly visually differentiate between accounts, since I use similar profile photos across gmail accounts, which is the default image. The solution that worked for me was:

• Open chrome://settings/people
• Click "Chrome name and picture":

• Change name to something short, and choose one of the canned pictures

Answer 10

Change Chrome Browser Profile Picture WITHOUT Signing Into Google Account

1. Using a file explorer, go to C:\Users\your user name\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data\
2. Rename the Avatars file to Avatars2
3. Create a new Avatars directory
4. Copy one of the avatars (e.g., avatar_illustration_cheese.png) from Avatars2 to the new Avatars directory
5. Rename that avatar with a 2 after the .png (e.g., avatar_illustration_cheese.png2)
6. To change the avatar to a different color, white for example, open that image in a photo editor and change the color
7. Save that image with the same name but without the 2 (e.g., avatar_illustration_cheese.png)
8. To change the avatar to a picture, open any photo in an editor, change the size to 192x192, and rename it to the same name as the file saved in step 4 and save it to the new Avatar directory
9. Restart the browser and the new image will show as the profile icon

Answer 11

This is probably too simple, but it works: I removed the file "Google Profile Picture.png" from my user directory, and put another file with the desired picture with the same name in the same directory. Worked.

Answer 12

I didnt try any of the above answers. This works already since long time for me.

1. Create a directory for a personal profile. eg. C:\ChromeProfiles\PRIVATE or C:\ChromeProfiles\BUSINESS .
2. Place an .ico file with the icon that you wish in above directory.
3. Create a shortcut on desktop (or other location). Depending on your version of windows adjust the location of the application Target : "C:\Program Files (x86)\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe" --user-data-dir=C:\ChromeProfiles\PRIVATE
4. After creating the shortcut, open the properties of the shortcut. Click Change Icon, and browse to the location of your personal profile. e.g. C:\ChromeProfiles\PRIVATE\PrivateIcon.ico
5. Add the shortcut to Taskbar.

By the way.. When you have a different profile create in the above way, you can then choose any Google-profile-image that you want, associated with you google account.

Answer 13

as of now you cannot do so directly or indirectly through something like resource hacker. I changed the profile icons (png pictures) in the Chrome.dll which is a file Google Chrome loads. However, in spite of them changed using resource hacker, my new icons do not show up in the settings section of Google Chrome so don't bother trying.