How to import Bookmarks from Old Brave to a new Brave on a different computer?

[Mattches]

@JoeM,
If you’ve asked this before, you’ve likely been directed to this article at some point:

For users who had issues migrating data from Brave Muon to Brave Core

Hello Community! On Friday (Dec 7th), we rolled out an update for some people currently using the older code-base (“Muon”) of Brave. The update was live for 2 hours from 12pm - 2pm (PST) and was intended to install the newer Brave (“Brave Core”) and import all of the data from Muon (Bookmarks, History, Saved passwords, Cookies, Stats (blocked count, etc), and Brave Payments). Planned Migration Process User is prompted to upgrade in Brave Muon. When the user hits “Update” or quits Brave, …

You mention

@JoeM

… yet I keep coming back to the same problem. I do not see anything but bookmarks. I do not see cookies, stats, brave payments. What further, when I do click bookmarks, it opens a dialog box for me to find the file. I don’t know what file name that is. I look for .config/brave, but the window does not show me any .config directories.

First, lets find your directory and confirm that your browsing data is still there. Try the following:

1. IIRC, you’re using an Ubuntu machine - open your preferred (or built in) Terminal
2. In the terminal, type ls -la and hit enter. This will display the full list of directories available, should look something like this:
   
   
3. Notice that I’ve pointed to the .config directory as it appears in list view. This is where we want to go. Type cd .config into the terminal and hit enter. (Note: If you do not see this .config folder for some reason, stop reading here and reply with a screenshot of what you do see listed.)
4. You should now be in the .config directory. Again, type ls -la and hit enter. You should now see some additional directories here - including Brave’s. At this point, should be looking at something like this (note again that I’ve pointed out the brave dir’s):
   
   
5. The old data you’re trying to access is held in the brave folder (BraveSoftware is where the new build lives). Step into this folder (cd brave) and locate a file called session-store-1.
6. Use a text editor to open this file (alternatively, you can type cat session-store-1 to output the text file directly in the terminal. At first glance, text here will look like chaotic jibberish. However, if you inspect closely, you should see the familiar web addresses of your bookmarked sites embedded in the text - kind of like a word search! This is my output after typing cat session-store-1 (with a few examples outlined):
   
   

Status check: You don’t have to comb through this while text file, just confirm that it does have “stuff” in it. If you do not have “stuff” in there, the “stuff” doesn’t look like anything you’d bookmarked or visited while browsing, or you’re unable to locate your session-store-1 file - STOP reading/following the steps below and let me know.

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Okay, now that we’ve confirmed your data is there and in the right place, we need to check to see if the old Brave (Muon) is still installed. The easiest way to do this from where you are now is (assume you’re in the same place you left off in the Terminal) to simply type brave into the terminal and hit enter.

Did Brave (Muon) launch? If not, stop here and let me know. Otherwise, move on to the next steps.

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At this point, you should have located the brave directory and confirmed that your session-store-1 file has “stuff” in it and have launched Brave Muon (old) on your machine. Great! Confirm that your data appears as intended in the browser, then close it. Now we can try to import from Muon again. You mentioned that you got your bookmarks when you attempted this before but no other data.

You may be running into an issue with the importer feature. Taken from the article linked to above (relevant parts in bold)

“If my data is still there, why didn’t it import during the update?”

We have an issue with the importer where order of operations and/or specific points of failure would halt the import process. We’re reworking the import function so that, even if it reaches a point of failure when importing some data, it will still run through and attempt to import any remaining data in the list (essentially the checked boxes on the import screen).

Here’s how you can workaround this issue and still manually import your Muon profile data into Brave Core:

1. Read this brief article describing how to import browsing data into Brave Core , but don’t import just yet .
   2. Before you import, check the boxes for the data you’d like to transfer but ensure that the Bookmarks option is NOT checked .
   3. Click Import when ready

This should import the desired browsing data into Brave Core.

Try the above method for importing your other browsing data by way of importer. Due to the length of this response, I’m going to stop here and wait to see what results you come up with.