Platform Support Guide

For the definitive selector-by-platform table, use the Browser Support Reference. This page covers the operating-system requirements behind that matrix.

Supported operating systems

Chromium and Firefox strategies are implemented for macOS, Linux, and Windows. Safari is intentionally skipped outside macOS. The code does not support other Node.js platform values.

macOS

Chromium-family browsers need readable profile files plus access to a Safe Storage secret in Keychain. The service name depends on the browser, for example Chrome Safe Storage, Microsoft Edge Safe Storage, or Brave Safe Storage.

Firefox reads cookies.sqlite from Firefox profile directories. Safari reads the modern com.apple.Safari container cookie file first and falls back to the legacy ~/Library/Cookies/Cookies.binarycookies path.

Safari access can require Full Disk Access for the terminal or host application. On a locked database, an interactive macOS run may ask before closing the browser, retrying, and relaunching it. --force suppresses those interactive remediation prompts; it does not bypass Keychain, file, or container permissions.

Linux

Chromium-family strategies read the browser's user-data directory and try these Safe Storage sources in order:

1. GNOME Keyring through secret-tool
2. Python's keyring module
3. KWallet
4. Chromium's historical peanuts fallback

Firefox discovery covers native ~/.mozilla/firefox, XDG $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/mozilla/firefox, Snap, and Flatpak profile roots. Safari is not available on Linux.

The current code uses local SQLite access, so readable profile directories and cookie files are required. A missing keyring can make encrypted Chromium cookies unreadable even when the database itself is accessible.

Windows

Chromium-family browsers read Local State, unwrap the master key with Windows DPAPI, and decrypt modern v10 cookies with AES-256-GCM. Real DPAPI decryption requires the optional native @primno/dpapi package to be available in the installation.

Firefox discovery covers roaming profile roots for regular Firefox, Firefox Developer Edition, and Firefox ESR. Safari is not available on Windows.

Arc is a special case: the query strategy has a Windows path, while browser availability detection still marks Arc unavailable. Treat Windows Arc as verify-locally rather than a guaranteed support promise; see the canonical matrix.

Runtime requirements

The package declares Node.js ^20, ^22, ^24, ^25, or ^26. The root import auto-detects the runtime. Use @mherod/get-cookie/node to force better-sqlite3, or @mherod/get-cookie/bun to force bun:sqlite.

Practical checks

Use the CLI itself before inspecting private browser directories manually:

get-cookie --browser chrome --list-profiles
get-cookie --browser firefox --list-profiles
get-cookie % example.com --browser chrome --verbose

For permission and decryption caveats, see Security & Privacy. For symptoms and recovery steps, see Troubleshooting.