Transfer Your Wordle Save State/Stats Between Different Browsers and Devices

IMPORTANT EDIT 01/07/2022 (please read first): It appears that, in the last week, NYT have changed how games are stored in the browser and the following no longer works. It’s possible they’ve tried to break this script since they’ve introduced premium Wordle functionality. But fear not! I’ve already created a generic script to transfer any daily web games between devices. Just head on over to this article and follow those instructions there.

EDIT 15/02/2022: I’ve updated the code to work on the nytimes.com/wordle version of the game, so you can transfer stats between the NYT version and the old version. You can ignore the edit below. If you already followed the steps below before, you’ll need to update your bookmarks with the new code by ensuring you go through all steps, including 1 and 7.

EDIT 11/02/2022: If you’ve found this article off the back of the fact that Wordle has moved over to the NYT website, then there may still be hope! When completing step 2 below, after navigating to powerlanguage.co.uk/wordle, in the brief second between the page loading and the redirect to the NYT website, you can click the ‘Esc’ key or the ‘X’ button next to the address bar to stop the redirect. You won’t be able to see a loaded Wordle game, but you will still be able to grab your stats by continuing to follow the steps below. The code is still available on GitHub if you want to grab it to self host. Or you could hit my archive of the game.

The news that Josh Wardle has sold Wordle to the New York Times has some worried that the game will disappear behind their paywall soon. If not immediately, it may be a possibility in future.

As it stands there are reassurances from Josh that it won’t become paywalled and that they’re going to work on ensuring save states are retained once NYT take over.

But that got me thinking about how one might protect themselves from Wordle disappearing one day, or even if they want to move their stats to a new phone, or onto a desktop browser.

Just tell me how to do it already!

In order to transfer those valuable stats, you need to be comfortable managing browser bookmarks and happy that some code will run in your browser. I can assure you it’s safe but that, of course, isn’t enough for all. It’s also not exactly simple and requires some tech savviness. So bear all that in mind!

The following are generic instructions. But this should work on most browsers.

If any of the below doesn’t work, scroll to the Known Issues section, and there might be more information to help you there.

1. In the browser you usually play Wordle on, add a new bookmark, setting the title to ‘Wordle — Save State’. You need to copy the full text from this link and paste it into the URL/Address field.
   This can be tricky if you don’t know what you’re doing, so follow instruction based on your device. Here’s how to create a bookmarklet in Chrome. Here are some instructions for iOS Safari. And here are some instructions for Android. If following other instructions, make sure when it mentions pasting javascript text youuse the text on this link.
2. Now navigate to the page where you play Wordle normally eg dailywordle.com or powerlanguage.co.uk
3. Now click the new ‘Wordle — Save State’ bookmark from the bookmarks menu in your browser, while the Wordle game page is open.
4. This will open a new page containing some text; this is your Wordle save data. First copy it, making sure to copy every part of the text; there may be some ‘=’ characters at the end that are easy to miss.
5. Next you need to get that text onto the new device/browser. You can email it to yourself, text yourself, WhatsApp it, create a note, save it to your desktop. Just keep it somewhere useful and accessible.
6. Now go to the device and browser you want to transfer your stats to.
7. Create another bookmark with the title ‘Wordle — Restore State’. This time set the URL/Address field to the text you can copy in full from this link. This is done in the same way as for step 1.
8. Next open Wordle on the browser you want to transfer your stats to and click the ‘Wordle — Restore State’ bookmark you just created, while the page is opened.
9. You’ll see a text box pop up that asks you to enter your save data. Paste the save data from step 4 and hit the ‘Restore’ button.
10. Done! If all went well the page will refresh with your stats on your new device. If you see the error “Can’t read the input.” then return to step 4 and make sure you copy the full save state.

You can use this method on any site that hosts Josh Wardle’s version of Wordle, such as this one I set up. You can even save the Wordle page to your computer and play it without ever needing to connect to the internet.

Once you’ve saved the bookmarks in your browser, you can skip steps 1 and 7 and move your save state as often as you like.

I hope someone finds this useful!

If you’re a developer and interested in the code, the source is hosted on GitHub.

Known Issues

1. Android — if nothing happens when you tap the bookmark in step 3, you might be able to fix it by searching for the bookmark by name (‘Wordle — Save State’) in the address bar and tapping it when it shows up there, rather than from the bookmarks page. This doesn’t work on Firefox for Android, unfortunately. If you’re tech savvy, there’s a discussion here about why that doesn’t work and what you can do to work around it.

Simon Archer is a data and web engineer based in Manchester, UK. He’s been particularly taken by Wordle and has created a version of the game that runs on the command-line and has spent more time than he should have analysing starter words and game strategies! By day he runs his own software company, archybold, so get in touch if you’re looking for a developer. You can buy him a coffee (beer) at ko-fi.com/archy_bold (no pressure).