iCloud Bookmarks extension not working

[lightshader]

Greetings,

I am experiencing an issue with the iCloud Bookmarks extension where no bookmarks are synchronised with my iCloud account. The same extension is working perfectly fine in MS Edge.
The only “useful” information I’ve managed to retrieve in the Apple iCloud for Windows’ Chrome log file reads “ZhromeMainWindow:: Unknown Browser”.
Now, I’m no expert in Chromium, GitHub and all things coding…however the above error message looks rather odd to me. Is “ZhromeMainWindow” an official name (string, var…whatever it is) or is it supposed to read “ChromeMainWindow”? If so, how would I go about restoring this to its original glory?

I have tested the extension in both the publicly available binary and a locally compiled build and the issue persists.

Lastly, is it expected that the binary hosted on GitHub and my compiled binary hashes differ? My local .exe and .zip files have been checked with Get-FileHash in Powershell.

Thank you for any assistance or feedback you might be willing to provide.

[networkException]

Can you link that extension? (is the source code available somewhere?)

Lastly, is it expected that the binary hosted on GitHub and my compiled binary hashes differ?

Sadly the free GitHub Action tier limits us to making builds that aren't reproducible, this is expected

[lightshader]

Thank you very much for your reply.

The extension is available here and I'm quite confident it's very closed (it's Apple's):
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/icloud-bookmarks/fkepacicchenbjecpbpbclokcabebhah?hl=en

I guess it talks to iCloud for Windows which is required to sync bookmarks stored on iCloud.
The exact error message reads as follows:
"[14372 @ Fri May 12 2023 23:09:37.892] 11796 ERROR ZhromeMainWindow::InitializeSyncingFromBrands Unknown browser. Not initializing syncing."

The "ZhromeMainWindow::InitializeSyncingFromBrands" error msg puzzles me, I would expect the browser detection part to, at the very least, read "ChromeMainWindow" or something similar.

Again, thank you for looking into this ;)

[gagne-3]

Hey, hoping to add an update to this issue.

I have been trying to get iCloud Bookmarks working for the past couple of days and I have tried a few things. None of them have worked, but it might prove helpful.

First, I have been able to use the iCloud Bookmarks Extension in non-chrome chromium browsers recently. I have been using Vivaldi recently and that had no problem syncing with iCloud for Windows. However, I have seen reports from people using Brave that they cannot sync though despite it being a chromium browser as well. I wonder what Vivaldi is doing to get the bookmarks to sync.

Secondly, I have seen some advice online that by having both normal chrome and a chromium browser installed, the extension will work. This has not worked for me, nor do I believe this is a good solution as it requires the installation of Chrome.

Third, I have found a weird hack to make iCloud think chrome is installed when it is not. It seems that iCloud checks a registry folder at the path "Computer\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\App Paths" for a folder called "chrome.exe". If I manually add this in using Regedit, and put the path to the chromium.exe, iCloud will now say that chrome is installed and prompt me to "remove extension". The remove extension button is there whether the extension is installed or not, however, if I click on it, it will open up the chrome web store for the extension in Chromium. Even with the extension installed and iCloud thinking it can see Chrome, I still get the message "Enable Bookmarks in iCloud for Windows to use iCloud Bookmarks with Chrome."

I don't know if this info is of any value to you guys, but it might be a clue as to how to get bookmarks sync working in ungoogled-chromium. I'm not a privacy guy, but I just love the stripped down nature of ungoogled-chromium and getting iCloud sync to work would be the cherry on top!