Google’s Chrome Android app will be updated with native support for exporting passwords in the near future, as suggested by a recently uncovered bug report pertaining to the upcoming feature. It’s currently unclear how long has the functionality been in development but it still doesn’t appear to be close to finished, with one Chromium contributor publicly informing their colleagues that the button for exporting passwords presently exhibits inconsistent behavior and sometimes isn’t responsive. The feature itself will be accessible from the “Save passwords” menu of the mobile browser’s settings which can be found under the “Basics” section. From there, users will be able to tap a three-dot icon situated in the top right corner of the interface to bring out an “Export passwords” field. The icon would push the “Help” bubble a bit to the left but doesn’t exist in any current version of Chrome for Android, stable or otherwise.
Upon initially interacting with the option to export one’s passwords, users would be presented with a lock screen requiring them to authenticate themselves before being allowed to access sensitive data stored by the browser. The functionality hence appears to be secured in the same manner that accessing individual passwords is, though no additional specifics have been revealed by its developers. Since Google’s Chrome already syncs passwords across all of one’s devices, being able to easily export them on a mobile device wouldn’t be a particularly useful feature within its ecosystem, especially since the very same option has already been available to Chrome desktop users for many years now. However, an exported list of Chrome passwords will most likely be importable into another Android browser and thus facilitate migration or could also be used by a password manager should you decide to stop saving your passwords directly in Chrome and opt for a standalone solution.
Google rarely communicates with users about experimental Chrome features that are still in development and isn’t expected to do so in regards to the browser’s native support for exporting passwords. Given the current state of affairs, a beta version of the service may hit the Canary channel in the first quarter of 2018.