How can this issue be reproduced?
Let Brave update, then discover that all your password data is gone
Brave Version( check About Brave):
Latest
This is the second time this has happened to me in Brave.
Started Brave this morning, took a couple minutes to launch because it was updating. Go to log in to a web site and all passwords I’ve been saving for the past year are gone. The list is empty in settings. This exact issue happened to me in March of last year with no resolution. Several others have reported this here as well.
PLEASE add a prompt for a back up of data before forcing updates that wipe out all of your data. This is a horrible bug that has not been resolved. Please offer guidance for those affected.
@Utidiysyisitdixoxohd Posting a topic with a similar issue. Use the topic to troubleshoot your issue and see if you can recover your passwords. Basically, check to see if you have a password backup file in the User Data folder and rename it. Make sure you copy original files to a different location just in case you need to move back. If this doesn’t work and your passwords are also in a different Brave profile, version, or device, you may be able to use Sync to recover your passwords. Hope this helps. Take care.
Thanks for the reply. I did troubleshoot for awhile and there was no backup and my data is gone. The bug has been reported multiple times here by several users but it never gets any attention.
Don’t ever use Brave to save passwords or bookmarks, because it will eventually delete them all for you.
v153
No sync, I do not login to the browser or profiles
No pw manager was used, only extension is ublock.
There is only one profile named “Profile 1”
When launching and an udpate is available, Brave can take a few minutes to display its window because its churning through a download and update in the background. This causes confusion as to why the program isn’t launching, so I may have clicked the icon again thinking it didn’t fire. I’m thinking this may have reset the update, and overwrites the current profile as default. This shouldn’t result in complete loss of data though.
There’s a reddit thread about this on the subreddit today.
If forced updates are necessary, a nice solution would be a window that tells the user “We are applying an update, please wait for a few minutes while updates download and install” instead of just hanging the Brave launch process in the background, and also offer way to backup data before applying the update. If the user doesn’t accept the update, force closing of the browser until they do. At least then we are given an opportunity to backup our data before the background update decides to overwrite it.
@Utidiysyisitdixoxohd,
Can you please go to your User data folder (~\AppData\Local\BraveSoftware\Brave Browser\User Data\) and in this directory, see if there is both a Profile 1 folder and a Default folder? If so, can you please go into the Default folder and find a file called Login data?
If you can, open this file — note that it is an SQL Lite DB file, so while you can open this file with a text editor, you will see some normal text and some garbled data. You should still be able to make out sites and user names from login credentials you’ve had stored. Additionally, you can download and use a free SQLite viewer such as this one to view the file: https://sqlitebrowser.org/dl/
There are online versions of this as well. Basically, we are checking to see if
You did in fact create a new profile somehow, which does not have your saved data in it, which is why it no longer appears in the browser.
Whether or not that login data is still present in your User data folder.
Let me know what you find out or if you need clarity on any of the above instructions.
Yes under ‘profile name and icon’ it says the name is “Profile 1”. I have never created a profile or applied an icon, I’m the only user on this pc. That must be the default name it uses. There is no ‘profile 1’ in the user data dir, just ‘default’
@Utidiysyisitdixoxohd,
Can you confirm for me that you did not accidently clear this data your self when using the Clear browsing data menu (History --> Clear browsing data)? Further, can you check and ensure that no data is set to be cleared “on exit” in the History --> Clear browsing data --> [On exit] menu?
I did not, none of those are checked. My passwords have been intact since the same thing happened earlier this year during an update, but that time it was both passwords and bookmarks that were deleted.
I’m not the only one this happens to, and data loss happens during updates for the lucky few.
I am hoping you are open to feedback regarding letting users have a bit more control over data when forced updates occur. Also being more transparent about when downloads/updates are happening instead of just letting the browser hang unresponsive during launch when updates are found. Thanks.