Why on earth would you need to back up your Google Chrome user profile? For starters you may not want to use Chrome’s own Sync feature – yes, it’s designed to synchronise your profile across multiple computers, but does all serve as an online backup. However, it requires a Google Account, which may be more than you can stomach. It’s also useful to have a local copy of your backup profile – after all, you can never have too many backups.

Fair enough: but doesn’t your existing backup tool already cover Chrome? Not necessarily – you’ll find many third-party backup tools cover Internet Explorer and Firefox, but Chrome’s recent emergence may ensure the program isn’t yet covered by your backup tool of choice.

This is where the Ronseal-inspired Google Chrome Backup comes into play: as the title suggests, it’s a backup tool. For Google Chrome. Launch the program, click Run Wizard and just follow the instructions to back up (or restore) your user profile. Need additional features? You can password-protect your backup from the Preferences menu (click the spanner icon) plus set a higher compression ratio if hard-drive space is tight. You can also create new profiles and delete existing ones should you need to.

Ignore the prompt about registering for the princely sum of €3.49 for bonus features – this is no longer available, and not really necessary: all the functionality you need is here in the free version.

One final point: the program will tell you a new version of Google Chrome is available, pointing you to the very latest development version. Ignore this – sadly it’ll appear each time you run Google Chrome Backup, but it’s a small price to pay for piece of mind.