What just happened.
I was browsing through the Brave settings and noticed you could create profiles. Having never seen this before, I tried it out. BIG MISTAKE. I’ve lost all my BAT rewards, all of my bookmarks, settings etc and now there is an ugly profile picture pinned to the icon on the taskbar.
Not only that, but ever since I pressed that add profile button, my pc has now been idling at 45-55 degress, where it normally idles at 30-35.
Can someone please tell me what I’ve just done and how I can fix it. Please help me revert back to the default settings, where I have all my BAT rewards and the icon looks normal again.
Thanks
3 Likes
@tomosborn01,
All you’ve done is created a new profile with no browsing data in it (because it’s new). To resolve this, simply click on the profile icon next to the main menu button in the browser:
Select your original profile and you’re good to go. You can also click the “gear” icon to open the profile manager, where you can delete unwanted profiles or add new ones.
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Thanks for the reply
I tried that, but there was no rewards on that other profile either. I then deleted both profiles thinking it would go back to normal but it didn’t. I have since reinstalled brave as it was the only way to stop my cpu being at 55°.
Have I fully deleted it now or is there anyway to get the original profile back from any remaining files?
EDIT: Also, what’s confused me is before when I would open brave my taskbar icon would be as expected, the brave logo. But now, it opens up a new window with a new icon
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Unfortunately no, you just gave all your rewards to Brave, all unclaimed and screw ups or Brave bugs resulting in lost bats go to Braves pockets
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@structdjm,
This completely incorrect:
- This wasn’t a bug – this was user error, as we will discuss below.
- Unclaimed rewards don’t “go to our pockets”. At this time, if this BAT is in a wallet that cannot be accessed, then it stays there and is essentially “lost”.
- Any loss of funds caused by “bugs” or issues that are on us, we have repaid, refunded or otherwise reimbursed. It makes absolutely no sense for someone to think that we would allow users to earn these tokens that we disseminate, just so that we can intentionally build a faulty mechanism and then “steal” the same tokens…that we just gave out…back? Wouldn’t we just…not give them out and avoid the whole thing?
@tomosborn01,
If you uninstalled Brave and deleted all associated browsing data, then yes unfortunately your BAT is gone. If that is not the case and you simply un/reinstalled, then you profile and Rewards data should still be there. I can guarantee you, that previously (in your original situation) you were simply looking at the wrong profile. Creating a new profile does not and can not delete or alter existing profile data.
Did you delete associated browsing data when you uninstalled the browser?
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@Mattches
No, I did not delete all browser data, just reinstalled.
Am I right in thinking the profiles are stored in AppData\Roaming\Local?
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Not in my case. On mobile I have one profile. Still shows correct Ads Received this month but estimated Rewards Pending has reset to zero. Sorry buddy, no claims of dishonesty here but you definitely have a bug again.
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@tomosborn01,
That is correct – you should see your profiles there. The rest of the path would be \Local\BraveSoftware\Brave-Browser\User Data. In this directory, do you see any additional profile folders (profile 1, profile 2, etc)? Additionally, do you see a Default folder here in this directory?
There is a folder for Profile 2, Guest Profile and yes, Default.
Also a bunch of other folders with random strings of letters.
@tomosborn01,
So the profile folders that are left in that directory correspond to the ones in the profile manager, as discussed above.
So now when you launch the browser (after having deleted the profiles), you do not see the profile manager icon in the browser (next to main menu), is that correct?
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Nope, after deleting the profiles it seems Brave just keeps creating new ones for me, ill delete 1 and 2 and reload Brave, now I’m on profile 3.
I think what is happening is that your data is in your Default folder, but you’re browser is picking up and using the other profiles. Here is what I would try given your situation:
- Go to
\Local\BraveSoftware\Brave-Browser\User Data
- Go into your
Default folder and find the Bookmarks file.
- Now you’ll want to open this in a text editor but note that unless you’re using Notepad++ or some other code editor, it may appear as plaintext with no formatting so it’ll look pretty messy.
- In this file, you should be able to confirm whether or not these are the bookmarks you originally had. For example, when I look at this file I see the following first entry which corresponds to a bookmark I’ve created in the browser:
- Look at the file and confirm whether or not these are the bookmarks associated with your original profile.
If they are the correct bookmarks and it appears to be your original profile, please continue on to the steps below. If they are not your bookmarks or something in the above instructions is unclear, please let me know and hold off on performing the steps below for now.
If you’re here, then we think your Default folder has all your original data. So here’s what we can try:
- Make sure you close/quit the browser.
- Go to
\Local\BraveSoftware\Brave-Browser\User Data
- Go into your
Default folder and copy everything here.
- Now go to your
Profile 3 folder (which as I under stand is the only profile you now have and since you just created it, it should be “blank” without any important data on it.) and paste/replace the information here with what you copied from Default
- Now relaunch the browser and check and see if your data is now back.
Thanks for the reply!
After checking the ‘Default’ folder there is no ‘Bookmarks’ file in it.
Also my bad, I am on Profile 2 currently and on the profile list within Brave there is #1 and the Guest Profile. However, in the User Data folder only the Guest, Default and Profile 2 is listed. Profile 1 is nowhere to be seen. There is also a System Profile folder.
@tomosborn01,
Can you check and see if you can find a Bookmarks file in any profile/default folder you see?
Neither Default nor System folders have a bookmarks file, Guest folder does but it is the deafult bookmarks bar/mobile bookmarks etc. Profile 2 does but that’s only because I imported my chrome data again.
Would a system restore to Mar 28th bring it back?
@tomosborn01,
Perhaps – let me confirm with a colleague to make sure that’s the case before I send you down a potentially bad path. I do appreciate your patience here.
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Hi folks,
Couple of things - @Willy123 there are some known problems with estimated earnings. They are just that - an estimate. Sometimes the estimate is wrong because there is a bug (and we know about some edge cases and are working to fix). Any realized earnings should not be changing and that is what @Mattches is referring to
@tomosborn01 the path you’re going to be looking for is %USERPROFILE%\AppData\Local\BraveSoftware\Brave-Browser\User Data. Inside here, your default profile is in the Default folder as called out above
Restoring from a backup definitely worth a shot 
Ideally, you can just grab that profile folder from the backup. I’m not keen on what day the incident happened, but let us know. If you’re talking about restoring your ENTIRE computer from a backup - I’d leave it up to you. It may not be worth it, depending on how many BAT you had
One way to avoid this in the future would be to connect the wallet with Uphold (if available in your region). At that point, the BAT is transferred to an Uphold account that you can access without Brave. There are a lot of vocal folks who are not happy with Uphold and we are looking at implementing other “custodian” options. Stay tuned for those
9 Likes
this one should be flooded with tons of heart and appreciation
thanks @clifton alot
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Great to hear you’re finally considering other options different to uphold. I suggest letting the user link whichever wallet they have.
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Hi,
Apologies for the late reply I’ve had a busy couple of days.
You’re right about a system restore not being worth it, I had only accumulated ~3 BAT in the first place, but I was just annoyed to lose it I guess.
I do believe I set up my wallet with uphold, I logged into my uphold account the other day in hope but I had no BAT stored:( thought I saved the recovery phrases in my LastPass vault but I can’t seem to find them. It’ll be interesting to see what you guys have planned for future wallet integration/BAT storage though!
For the sake of 3 BAT, I think it’s just worth starting over. I’m just that guy who hates losing things!
However, I’m still confused why my taskbar pin for brave opens up a separate widow with a separate app icon. How can I go back to how it was before?
Thank you a lot @Mattches and @clifton for very clearly going out of your way to help me it’s been greatly appreciated!
