How Does Sync Work?

I had a few questions on how Brave bookmark sync feature worked.

  1. Does it save my bookmarks in the cloud? Or on a blockchain? Or is it just saved on your device?

  2. If the bookmarks are saved on a cloud or blockchain are they encrypted at rest?

  3. When syncing between devices is the data encrypted in transit?

  4. If they bookmarks are only stored on devices and not on a cloud or blockchain are there any plans to add this feature in the future?

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Hi @trymeout

Does this help.

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@trymeout,
The above link is for how to Sync but, if I understand correctly, it seems like you’re interested in the technical details of the process.
This article is a bit older (in the process of re-documenting this) but more or less outlines the Sync process “under the hood”:

From the links I read it seems sync bookmarks are stored on an Amazon S3 server? But my identity is not stored on the server in any way since your email, phone number, or name is not require to use sync?

Is this right?

Also is sync data encrypted in transit? It does say in the link above it is encrypted at rest and Brave cannot read users sync data.

Hi @trymeout.

Yes on S3. And no identity, no email/password/phone number/name no nothing. There’s a sync code via words and QR code that chains the devices together.

@rebron2000 is it correct that the sync feature does not work yet on IOS devices? I just tried to sync my iPhone with my Mac, but there was no sync option (to read scan the code) on the iPhone Brave.

Any idea (I know, no commitment) when the IOS version will become available?

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Hi @iherman. We’re in testing (QA) with it on iOS, will be sooner than later.

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Sounds good, I.am looking forward to it!

Is the bookmark data encrypted in transit and at rest?

And since it uses a QR code that chains the devices together does that mean the sync server(s) is blockchain which stores bookmarks instead of cryptocurrency? Or is the QR code just the way accounts are registered instead of emails and passwords?

And could I write down my sync code or copy and paste my sync code in a password manager and use it to restore my devices if I happen to lose or break all of my devices?

Yes. No. Yes. Yes but sync is sync, it’s not a backup service so I wouldn’t recommend using it that way. And let’s hope you don’t lose and break all of your devices though, that would suck.

So Brave Sync QR Codes are essentially a way for your devices to communicate between eachother. Brave Sync is essentially P2P except it needs a central server (Hense the QR Code) to talk to each device and act as a middle man?

Tried using QR code, but camera passes the URL information direct to Safari on the iOS. It’s not like you can delete Safari from your iPhone. Even tried turning off Safari’s access to the camera… no dice.

This says that bookmarks are sent to the server “periodically.” How often does that happen, and is there a way to force it to happen? It would be helpful for people like me who switch between computers throughout the day, Thanks!

Is there some hopes this will come sooner? I would love to use Brave on iOS, too. At the moment, I use Opera or Mozilla, with some extra tricks to sync my bookmarks on the desktop; the only reason I do that is because those two do sync bookmarks…

Hi @iherman.

Bookmark sync is available in iOS now version 1.9 as of April 2nd.
https://brave.com/brave-sync-ios/

Sorry about not getting back to you. We’re also working on improving sync to sync additional data like logins and history.

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Hi @rebron2000,

thanks for your reply! No need to apologize: I should have checked the release notes, I presume it was mentioned there, So it is my fault, too!

I have just set up my ring, syncing my MacBook with my iPhone and my iPad. So far it works well!

Bottom line: thank you.

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