How to access Google Chrome browser history programmatically on local machine

Question

I want to write a simple program which shows my internet activity over a period of time (which site I visited, how many times and so on). I mostly use Google Chrome browser.

Answer 1

There is an open source program called Hindsight (https://github.com/obsidianforensics/hindsight) that analyzes browsing history in Chrome. While the program is rather large and complicated, it access the various Chrome SQLite files using SQL queries, which can pull out and use independently, either in a SQLite browser or a different program.

An example of one for the Chrome v30+ History database is:

SELECT urls.id, urls.url, urls.title, urls.visit_count, urls.typed_count, urls.last_visit_time, urls.hidden, urls.favicon_id, visits.visit_time, visits.from_visit, visits.visit_duration, visits.transition, visit_source.source
FROM urls JOIN visits ON urls.id = visits.url
LEFT JOIN visit_source ON visits.id = visit_source.id

There are many more SQL queries for different Chrome databases, as well as different versions of Chrome.