I am switching my hard drive and doing a PC factory reset and I wanted to get my passwords that are stored in my Brave Browser

Yes, this will recover your passwords, as well as any other browsing data associated with your previous install.

The exact path to the folder you’re looking for is:
C:\Users\[Your User Name]\AppData\Local\BraveSoftware\Brave-Browser\User Data

Thanks for making yourself clear!
Should I copy the whole BraveSoftware folder? Or just User Date?

Copying my user data did not restore my passwords! It only restored my bookmarks and history, I tried it out on my backup computer. I did a uninstall and reinstall on Brave but it did not work! What are my other options?

@Alex12,
You grabbed the entire User data folder and paste/replaced the one on the new install and passwords weren’t preserved?

Yes that is right. Brave gave me a pop up message saying some files were corrupted so it is resetting most settings to default. This is very bad! I need to get my passwords! There must be a way to isolate the password file and get it back? What can I do at this point?

@Alex12,
Do you still have the original copy of your old User data folder?

Yes, I have the original copy of the file named User Data. We must locate the file and find a way to display it’s contents correct?

@Alex12,
We can, but I believe it’s safer to carry over the entire contents of the folder. However, I do think the User data folder may be incorrect – my apologies. Can you try and do the same thing except for this time, inside the User data folder, you’ll find you browsing profile folder.

If you have more than one profile, you may want to grab those as well – but if you only have one profile, you’ll want to copy the Default folder (which is the default profile data path created by the browser on install).
image
So there will always be a Default folder, then any subsequent profiles you’ve created will be named Profile 1, Profile 2 etc, inside the User Data folder.

So to summarize:

  1. In the safe copy you have of your User data folder, go in and find the Default folder:
  2. Copy this folder, then return to your new Brave installation
  3. Ensure all instances of Brave are closed, then delete the Default folder here
  4. Paste the Default folder you copied here.
  5. Launch the browser

Let me know if any of the above is unclear and/or if it works. I just performed this exact set of steps on my end to make sure it worked and that no data was lost first – everything transferred over without a hitch :slight_smile:

I am not able to put the “Default” file in to my User Data Folder, I think we should look to try to locate the password file and view it.

@Alex12,
Not the Default file – the Default folder, as shown in my image above. Below is a video of me doing the following:

  1. I already have a saved copy of my Default folder on my Desktop.
  2. I launch Brave to show that it’s using a fresh, unused profile that opens with the Welcome Tour.
  3. I close the browser, delete the Default folder in User data, then drag/paste my safe copy into the User data folder.
  4. I relaunch Brave, which launches with community.brave.com as my homepage – as per my profile. I also have all my passwords, bookmarks and other data along with it.

Okay, I will do as you said and showed me in the video and see if it works.

It did not work sadly! I get this error when I open Brave,

Some settings were reset
Brave detected that some of you settings were corrupted by another program and reset them to their original defaults.

If you were wondering, I am doing this testing on my backup PC, it is running Windows 10 OS just like my main PC. I do not know what program could be corrupting this setup, perhaps such results will be different when I do this process on my New PC which will have a clean install of Windows but I can’t take that risk as it may not work and I would have lost all my passwords! So I need to isolate and read the password file to be safe in this matter. How can this be done?

@Alex12,
You’ll have to rely on 3rd party software in order to do that, given that these passwords are encrypted when stored. There’s no way to view them in plaintext without using some other tool.

The file you’re looking for is the Login data file inside the Default folder. This holds your saved passwords/accounts. You can copy just the Login data file and replace the one found in your new/fresh Brave installation to achieve this as well. However, it should be working with your entire default folder.

Are you certain that the copy of Default you have is the same one you copied from the original installation you had?

Yes, I am getting it right from my C drive. I am copying it and pasting it on a USB and transferring it to my other PC. I am not moving it to the USB only copying it so the original copy remains there on my C drive.

If I am not able to open this password file, what software would I have to use to open it, I can verify that I am indeed the owner of these passwords, would there be a way to get the encryption key? The other theory is my second PC may have problems and not be able to complete this process. I am having a look at the file Login data, it does not seem like high end encryption, it just scrambled the passwords beyond recognition, I can still see some of the passwords a little but they are mixed up with random characters so it would be nearly impossible to identify them. What can I do with this situation?

Update, I am almost 100% sure something is wrong with the backup PC as even when I try to replace and add a file it will not work and it gives me the same error, I am using Linux right now on my main PC in the mean time until I get my new hard drive Tuesday tomorrow, what should I do beside make a copy of the User Data folder? Are there any other folders or files I should copy to a USB?

I would need to know the encryption algorithms to decrypt it. Example, let’s say the encryption algorithms were, Hazz-15, Base-64-ATOM-128. I would need to know the order in which they were put in to reverse it. I will try your method on a different PC.

Anyway, thanks for the help! I will make a backup of the User Data folder, Default, Login data. If there is any other folder or file I need to backup let me know.

Is there any information you can provide me with decrypting the Login data file so I can get my passwords recovered if all else fails?

I would also like to know this until the the cloud sync for passwords feature is ready. We need a manual way to recover the passwords we’ve saved.

Some of them are generated passwords!

Passwords can be exported from the Autofill menu and imported the same way. I believe that to do this you will have to wait for the 0.71x release, due to the fact that the #import-password was removed from the chromium backend and the team needs to reimplement this feature.

But I lost all the passwords from the autofill section on the latest update. See Lost all Brave passwords on update!

@Mattches Any help? It would be great to get access to the passwords again.

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