Description of the issue: - Brave bookmarks went missing 3 days ago. Possibly due to file cleanup, but all files have been restored, and yet no bookmarks are present.
Steps to Reproduce (add as many as necessary): 1. 2. 3. - Restored all deleted files from ‘trash’. No success.
Actual Result (gifs and screenshots are welcome!): None are applicable here.
Expected result: - Restoration of bookmarks.
Reproduces how often: - N/A
Operating System and Brave Version(See the About Brave page in the main menu): Mac OS 10.15.7 (Mohave), Brave version - 1.25.70
@jscafaro,
Thank you for reaching out. Can you please elborate a bit on what you mean when you say “file cleanup”? What was the exact action/app that trashed your bookmarks/Brave data? Further, when you restored everything, is the only thing missing your bookmarks or is other data missing as well?
I had a documents file containing various MS Office-type documents and was cleaning those up. I don’t recall cleaning out any other types of docs or files, but I’m also not sure if anything might’ve made its way into the searches I was conducting to perform the clean up.
Thus far, the bookmarks are the only thing I’m missing. My passwords, addresses, and credit card information appears to be intact.
When I navigate to the Brave folder, there are hundred upon hundreds of subfolders there. None - on the surface, anyway - say bookmarks or bookmarks.bak. I haven’t looked in each subfolder as that would take hours.
Is there a way to connect with you by voice or video or screen sharing?
@jscafaro,
Apologies – I should be more specific.
So I’m assuming you only have one browsing profile and if so, the folder you’re looking for is the Default folder:
I have multiple browsers… Chrome, Safari, Firefox, and Brave.
Under the Default folder in Brave, there is a subfolder named blob_storage. That folder contains a file named bookmarks and another named bookmarks.bak.
I don’t see any other files of that kind in there, but again, it’s (Default) a huge subfolder.
Perfect – now, can you open the Bookmarks file with a text editor (I used the built-in TextEdit app) and check to see if they are, in fact, your bookmarks? The formatting will be a little weird but you should be able to tell whether or not they are your bookmarks. For example, mine looks like this (just showing the first two bookmarks):
I see bookmarks, but only 2 of them. Those are bookmarks I’d saved since the rest of the bookmarks vanished.
I see 2 other bookmarks files when I do a search for all files all apps which is MUCH larger, but can’t tell which browser they’re associated with. I have bookmarks on multiple browsers, but because Brave is now my default browser, it would have many more bookmarks than Chrome, Safari.
@jscafaro,
The Default folder you were looking in should have been the correct one. It’s hard to say what exactly is happening here – if you deleted initially the Bookmarks file, and then restored it from the trash can, it should have been put back right where it was deleted and have the same information on it.
The fact that you’re not seeing your old bookmarks, but are instead seeing only a few of the new ones you’ve added means that you are looking at a “fresh” Bookmarks file. Can you tell me if you navigate again to
Question… Within the files I deleted were at least two bookmarks files. B=bookmarks and bookmarks,bak. When I restored the files, I put them in a temporary folder on my desktop. Tonight, after reading your last message, I deleted the bookmark files in the default directory in the Brave folder. I then replaced the new bookmarks files I referenced earlier with the files I’d mistakenly deleted.
Still… no success.
One of the bookmarks files has a LOT of bookmarks in it, or so it appears. Is there a way to get Brave to recognize those files now that I’ve put them in the default subfolder? When I click on bookmarks, I don’t see any at all at this point.
@jscafaro,
First, make copies of the bookmarks files you found that appear to be the ones you’re looking for. Then, can you try (make sure the browser is closed) taking out the Bookmarks file (just move it somewhere else) and then renaming the Bookmarks.bak file to Bookmarks (so just remove the .bak portion). Make sure it’s in the Default folder, then launch the browser and see if your bookmarks data is pulled in.
I’m trying to move the bookmark files FROM the blob_storage subfolder, to simply a standalone file in Default. It never allows me to do so, failing each time to actually move anywhere. The files just stay in the blob_storage subfolder.
