I had “Sync Everything” enabled on my phone’s sync settings, but my other devices’ open tabs never appeared on my phone or vice versa. Since I preferred it this way, I didn’t touch anything so that nothing would change.
I had a 1000+ open tabs on a lot of different subjects and more than half of them were not bookmarked yet. The worst part is that I was just about to bookmark them but for the first time I noticed a tab group that I recently added to my laptop on my phone. I thought maybe the sync setting was causing this and since I prefer each device’s open tabs to be separate, I disabled the sync open tabs option before bookmarking and brave removed all but about 30 random tabs from my phone.
I quickly changed the setting back in a panic. Afterwards, it opened a few hundred tabs but only maybe 50 of those were from my phone; the rest were from my other devices. I also might be misremembering them too. It’s possible that none of them were originally from my phone.
Open tabs are stored locally, so is there somewhere in file manager where I can access their files and restore them? I really need that data.
Why did this happen? I opened those 1000 tabs on my phone, not another device. Why did they disappear after disabling “sync open tabs”? They aren’t even in my history.
Why doesn’t Brave just have the option to store active sessions online with encryptions so people could recover them when this happens? There are a lot of post where people lose their open tabs for numerous reasons (happened to me on windows too).
Is there any way I could get in contact with Brave directly? I really need that data
@Tab_Enjoyer, Brave stores open tabs and session data in its internal app storage on Android, which is part of the protected system space. This data is not accessible through the standard file manager or any non-root file explorer apps. Android’s security model prevents users from viewing or modifying app-specific storage unless the device is rooted.
Without root access, there’s no way to retrieve or explore Brave’s internal session files, where your open tabs would have been saved. These files are typically stored in a location like /data/data/com.brave.browser/, but that path is completely locked to regular users. Rooting the phone would technically allow access to those files, but it’s not a viable or safe option for most people and can void warranties or introduce other risks.
Unfortunately, this means lost tabs from local session storage on Android cannot be recovered once they’re cleared out like this.
They would be in history but our history is limited on time and entries. Depending on how many sites you have visited or how long ago you were at each one, the history from those visits may have been overwritten.
They shouldn’t and typically wouldn’t. So I’m not sure what might have happened.
Honestly, there’s nothing you can do.
You’re kind of doing that here. I’ll tag in @Mattches to see if he can help. But as I indicated earlier, there’s typically nothing that can be done due to how Android handles where things are saved and you didn’t have any backups.
@Tab_Enjoyer basically everything @Saoiray is correct here. I can’t speak for why exactly it happened but with respect to retrieving that information, there’s not a lot that can be done here.