get-cookie

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Browser-Specific Details ​

The supported CLI selectors and platform caveats live in the Browser Support Reference. This page explains how each browser family is read.

Chromium family ​

The CLI selectors chrome, edge, arc, brave, opera, opera-gx, and vivaldi use the same Chromium cookie schema. The strategy scans for Cookies files below each browser's platform-specific user-data directory and reads them as SQLite databases.

Typical roots include:

BrowsermacOSLinuxWindows
Chrome~/Library/Application Support/Google/Chrome~/.config/google-chrome%LOCALAPPDATA%\\Google\\Chrome\\User Data
Edge~/Library/Application Support/Microsoft Edge~/.config/microsoft-edge%LOCALAPPDATA%\\Microsoft\\Edge\\User Data
Brave~/Library/Application Support/BraveSoftware/Brave-Browser~/.config/BraveSoftware/Brave-Browser%LOCALAPPDATA%\\BraveSoftware\\Brave-Browser\\User Data
Opera~/Library/Application Support/com.operasoftware.Opera~/.config/opera%APPDATA%\\Opera Software\\Opera Stable
Opera GX~/Library/Application Support/com.operasoftware.OperaGX~/.config/opera-gx%APPDATA%\\Opera Software\\Opera GX Stable
Vivaldi~/Library/Application Support/Vivaldi~/.config/vivaldi%LOCALAPPDATA%\\Vivaldi\\User Data

Arc has an implementation caveat on Windows; use the canonical matrix rather than assuming parity with the other Chromium selectors.

Chromium profiles ​

Without --profile, every discovered cookie file is queried. The profile selector is matched case-insensitively against the display name in Local State.profile.info_cache, then against the directory name such as Default or Profile 1.

bash
get-cookie session example.com --browser chrome --profile "Work"
get-cookie --browser chrome --list-profiles

If the profile metadata is missing or unreadable, the strategy falls back to the discovered cookie files instead of proving that the requested profile was applied. Check --list-profiles before relying on a profile-scoped result.

Chromium encryption ​

  • macOS retrieves a browser-specific Safe Storage secret from Keychain and can fall back to Chrome's Safe Storage entry for another Chromium browser.
  • Windows reads the encrypted master key from Local State and uses DPAPI; real decryption requires the optional native @primno/dpapi binding.
  • Linux tries secret-tool, Python keyring, and KWallet before falling back to Chromium's historical peanuts password.
  • Modern Windows v10 cookies use AES-256-GCM. The shared Chromium path also handles AES-128-CBC cookies and the modern domain-hash prefix.

Firefox ​

Firefox uses cookies.sqlite with no additional browser encryption layer. The strategy discovers profile databases from:

  • macOS: ~/Library/Application Support/Firefox/Profiles
  • Windows: roaming Mozilla\\Firefox, Firefox Developer Edition, and Firefox ESR roots
  • Linux: ~/.mozilla/firefox, XDG, Snap, and Flatpak roots

--profile matches the Name field in profiles.ini. Use --container to filter Firefox cookies and --browser firefox to query only Firefox:

bash
get-cookie session example.com --browser firefox --profile "default-release"
get-cookie session example.com --browser firefox --container Work
get-cookie session example.com --browser firefox --container none

Container names are resolved from the profile's containers.json; numeric IDs are accepted directly. The exported metadata includes containerId when Firefox provides a user-context ID.

Safari ​

Safari is macOS-only and uses Cookies.binarycookies. The modern container path is preferred:

text
~/Library/Containers/com.apple.Safari/Data/Library/Cookies/Cookies.binarycookies

If that file does not exist, the strategy falls back to:

text
~/Library/Cookies/Cookies.binarycookies

Safari has no named-profile filter. It checks file readability and can guide an interactive terminal user to Full Disk Access when macOS blocks the container file.

Correct strategy examples ​

typescript
import {
  ChromiumCookieQueryStrategy,
  FirefoxCookieQueryStrategy,
  SafariCookieQueryStrategy,
} from "@mherod/get-cookie";

const edge = new ChromiumCookieQueryStrategy("edge", "Work");
const firefox = new FirefoxCookieQueryStrategy("default-release", "Work");
const safari = new SafariCookieQueryStrategy();

const cookies = await edge.queryCookies("session", "example.com");

Browser strategies handle inaccessible stores by logging and returning an empty array. Treat an empty result as “no readable match,” not proof that the cookie does not exist.