Backup of Search Engines

Is there a way to manually back up my list of search engines, especially my “Other search engines?” This would be great to have as part of syncing!

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Syncing search engines across devices is just as important as syncing extensions as outlined in this post.

I had two instances of Brave on my machine, one for personal, and one for work. Therefore, when getting a new computer re-installing all of the extensions and re-configuring all of the custom search engines has been a lot of extra work.

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Yes, this is possible.

  1. Close Chrome and Brave.

  2. Find the Web Data file in your Chrome profile. "%USERPROFILE%\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default\Web Data"
    (file with no extension).

  3. Open it in the https://sqlitebrowser.org/dl/

  4. Find the Table “keywords” and EXPORT it as CSV (default settings).

  5. COPY the Brave DB file as a backup somewhere safe
    and then open the Brave Database
    "%USERPROFILE%\AppData\Local\BraveSoftware\Brave-Browser\User Data\Default\Web Data"

  6. Go to the table “keywords”. Go to the content view and remove all rows (Ctrl+A, “delete row”).

  7. Go to FILE > IMPORT. Select the CSV file you exported on the step 3. Import it, saying you want to add the rows to the EXISTING table KEYWORDS.
    TICK THE CHECKBOX “first row - column names”.

  8. Press the button “Write changes”. Done.

If something went wrong use the backup and try the steps again.

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On a Mac, the path to the Web Data file is this:

~/Library/Application Support/BraveSoftware/Brave-Browser/Default/Web Data

Though it would be great for the average user if a future Brave version would include a simple backup/export button so we won’t need to fiddle about with manipulating database files anymore :wink:

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Is this difficult to add as part of the regular sync ? seems like this is also a “setting” that should be synced

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Some command line operations for macOS to copy keywords from a profile to another one (Brave or Chrome).

Close the apps:

osascript -e 'quit app "Chrome"'
osascript -e 'quit app "Brave"'

Configure source and destination profiles:
(Profiles are named: “Default”, “Profile 1”, “Profile 2”…)

SRC_DB="$HOME/Library/Application Support/Google/Chrome/Default/Web Data"
DST_DB="$HOME/Library/Application Support/BraveSoftware/Brave-Browser/Default/Web Data"

One-liner:
:warning: It deletes first all existing values in the destination profile!

(echo "DELETE FROM keywords;"; sqlite3 "$SRC_DB" ".dump --data-only keywords") | sqlite3 "$DST_DB"

Or using separate commands and a temporary file:
(Useful for backup or to modify the data before importing into the destination profile.)

sqlite3 "$SRC_DB" ".dump --data-only keywords" > /tmp/keywords.sql
sqlite3 "$DST_DB" "DELETE FROM keywords"
sqlite3 "$DST_DB" < /tmp/keywords.sql

I’ve a problem identifying the good profile. I have 8 profile but only 5 in Chrome folder (numbered 1, 4, 6, 8, 15). For test, I just created a new one with no effect this folder.
Thanks for your help

This is the way. Amazing. I also need to paste blanks to all the NULL fields.