Lost Groups & Tabs. How to save and recover?

Browser Support
1

I’m using Brave in Windows 11, 23H2. It works very well and is my default browser.

This is what happened:

After a clean boot of my PC, I was using the EaseUS Partition Manager application. Within the app I started an online chat to ask a question about the app. I had not opened my Brave default browser at that time. Brave opened automatically (as default) for the chat and after the chat I discovered my many groups (16), each with many tabs (around 290 tabs), had disappeared. In “History” it did not have a full list of recently closed tabs & groups.

How can I regularly save all those tabs & groups to a file so that I can recover them if it happens again? Thanks.

2

Create a “Tabs” folder within your bookmarks collection, and create a bookmark for each of your Tabs.

Do the work.

Then back up your data ← a daily routine.

Brave Browser installation location on Windows OS

Application “brave.exe”

64 architecture

C:\Program Files\BraveSoftware\Brave-Browser\Application\brave.exe

The initial Brave Browser Profile is, by default, named “Profile 1” (unless you change that name → brave://settings/getStarted).

The folder that contains the initial Brave Browser Profile, is the Default folder (a name that you must not change):

C:\Users[UserName]\AppData\Local\BraveSoftware\Brave-Browser\User Data\Default\

That path may also be written:

%LOCALAPPDATA%\BraveSoftware\Brave-Browser\User Data\Default\

%USERPROFILE%\AppData\Local\BraveSoftware\Brave-Browser\User Data\Default\

If you create 1 additional Profile (aka “Profile 2”), it will be stored in folder Profile 1:

C:\Users[UserName]\AppData\Local\BraveSoftware\Brave-Browser\User Data\Profile 1\

If you create a 2nd additional Profile (aka “Profile 3”), it will be stored in folder Profile 2:

C:\Users[UserName]\AppData\Local\BraveSoftware\Brave-Browser\User Data\Profile 2\

IMPORTANT - Replacing Profile folders

When replacing Brave Browser Profile folders:

Folder named Default (including its contents) can only replace its likeness: the folder named Default.

Folder named Profile 1 (including its contents) can only replace its likeness: the folder named Profile 1.

Folder named Profile 2 (including its contents) can only replace its likeness: the folder named Profile 2.

IMPORTANT - Brave Browser Preferences

Some Brave Browser Preferences are stored in the Preferences file:

%LOCALAPPDATA%\BraveSoftware\Brave-Browser\User Data\Default\Preferences

The contents of that Preferences file, are not exactly the contents of, brave://prefs-internals/.

Some Brave Browser Preferences are stored in the Local State file:

%LOCALAPPDATA%\BraveSoftware\Brave-Browser\User Data\Default\Local State

Bookmarks and Bookmarks.bak files:

%LOCALAPPDATA%\BraveSoftware\Brave-Browser\User Data\Default\Bookmarks
%LOCALAPPDATA%\BraveSoftware\Brave-Browser\User Data\Default\Bookmarks.bak

Cache (folder):

%LOCALAPPDATA%\BraveSoftware\Brave-Browser\User Data\Default\Cache\

Cookies (file):

%LOCALAPPDATA%\BraveSoftware\Brave-Browser\User Data\Default\Cookies

History (file - usually lots of data):

%LOCALAPPDATA%\BraveSoftware\Brave-Browser\User Data\Default\History

Crash Reports:

%LOCALAPPDATA%\BraveSoftware\CrashReports\

In each of the BB user’s profile folders, there is a folder named Sessions.

In the Sessions folder, files like:

  • Session_13382221894366221
  • Tabs_13382477836056428

The long numbers in the file names, are time-and-date info.

Sometimes, you might be lucky - the Tabs_ . . . file is intact.

If Brave has not overwritten these files, you may be able to restore them by replacing the current session files (while Brave is closed) with an older one.

3

Thanks for your reply. Creating 290 bookmarks for all my tabs? What about the groups of those tabs? Surely Brave can find a way to just backup all groups & tabs?

4

Your suggestion to: “Create a “Tabs” folder within your bookmarks collection, and create a bookmark for each of your Tabs” is a good one. There is an option to “Bookmark all tabs”. Seems like a good way to go. Thanks.