helium-sync (Windows)

This is a Windows fork of aadarwal/helium-sync, which was originally macOS-only. This fork rewrites the tool in Go for Windows.

Bidirectional sync of Helium browser bookmarks and saved tab groups across Windows machines, using your own private git repo as the transport.

helium-sync push     # snapshot live profile -> git repo -> origin
helium-sync pull     # git pull -> write canonical state to live profile

Two devices, one user, sequential. Last push wins. Close Helium before pull; push can read bookmarks while Helium is running.

Install

via Scoop

scoop bucket add tinywifi https://github.com/tinywifi/scoop-bucket
scoop update
scoop install helium-sync

If you already have it installed:

scoop update
scoop update helium-sync

from source

git clone https://github.com/tinywifi/helium-sync-windows
cd helium-sync-windows
go test ./...
.\scripts\build.ps1
bin\helium-sync.bat setup

Prerequisites:

• Go 1.23+
• Git

Commands

Core workflow:

helium-sync setup
helium-sync push
helium-sync pull

Inspect and debug:

helium-sync status
helium-sync diff
helium-sync doctor
helium-sync version
helium-sync log -n 20

Portable backup:

helium-sync export --output backup.json
helium-sync import backup.json --allow-helium-running

Maintenance and recovery:

helium-sync init --force
helium-sync adopt --yes
helium-sync push --dry-run
helium-sync pull --dry-run
		helium-sync restore
		helium-sync gc --keep-days 30

Shared flags:

• --profile <path>: Helium profile directory.
• --repo <path>: private data repo path.
• --target <bookmarks|saved_tab_groups>: limit commands to one target.
• --strict: fail push on validation warnings.
• --allow-helium-running: bypass write guard for tests.

Synced Data

Bookmarks are stored in Default\Bookmarks as JSON. The checksum is cleared during extraction so Chromium can recompute it per device.

Saved tab groups are protobuf values in Default\Sync Data\LevelDB\ under keys like saved_tab_group-dt-<UUID>. The Go port reads LevelDB through a temporary copy for safe extraction and writes through LevelDB batches when applying canonical state.

Not Synced

History, cookies, passwords, extensions, settings, themes, and live open tabs.