Problems with sync btwn phone and desktop

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Description of the issue:
I initially got Brave for mobile (android phone). Then I got the desktop browser (on linux). I set up sync. Sync was very problematic, but eventually I got my open tabs from the phone open on desktop as well.

But now, when I open Brave on my phone, almost all of my open tabs have been removed from my tab groups and are mixed up all out of order. It’s complete chaos.

I re-made tab groups on the desktop and regrouped everything, but this did not regroup them on my phone. Is there any way to fix this, or is the phone browser just going to be unusable until I can go through 90+ tabs one by one to regroup them AGAIN? And will they stay where I put them, or will Brave keep shuffling them around randomly?

Is there any way to tell Brave to keep my tabs in the tab groups that I put them in? Or at very least, keep my tab order the same; even if I lose the groups, if the overall tab order could be kept the same, I can work with that. But when everything gets moved around, I don’t know where anything is, and the browser is unusable.

And how exactly does sync work, ie, when and how do changes get synched? I have read Brave’s page on sync, but it does not answer my question:

I made some changes on desktop, waited a while, but nothing changed on the phone. I tried making some changes on the phone, waited a while, but nothing changed on desktop. I tried closing and reopening the browsers, waited a while, still no change. I don’t see a manual sync button, so what do I actually need to do to make the changes sync to the other device?

The main thing I care about right now is to sync my open tabs, and keeping tabs preferably in the same groups, or if that’s not possible, then at least keep them in the same order.

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Just to be clear, it doesn’t mirror tabs. So just because you open, close, or do anything to tabs on one device does not mean it will happen to them on the other device.

When it says it syncs open tabs, it means it makes it possible for you to see what tabs are open on other devices. That’s as far as it goes.

About the only thing you might be able to do is to bookmark your tab groups for them to be open when you click on it.

Sync shares passwords and bookmarks across devices as long as you have selected for them to sync in your sync options. When devices are first synced, it adds anything to each device that wasn’t on the sync chain already. Once they all have the same content, any password or bookmark you add or remove from one device will be added or removed from other devices on the sync chain.

History only syncs typed history. This means if I go to Google and search for Applesauce and then click on a link that goes to Walmart or Amazon for a listing on applesauce, this won’t be in my synced history. Instead, I would have had to do something like type in the link https://www.amazon.com/Motts-Applesauce-cups-36-count/dp/B01EOW6OBS/ for it to show up in the History synced between devices.

Open tabs get synced in the Recent Tabs or Open Tabs part of settings. On Desktop, this is under History. On Android it’s under Recent Tabs in your hamburger menu. Here is where you see tabs open on other devices and you can click to open them on your current.

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It’s important to note that if you have something set up to be synced on one device but it’s not enabled on another, then they won’t sync. Both devices require permissions to be turned on.

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Thank you, I understand now.

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I feel that this is still an issue. Like, this should not have happened, especially if…

So according to this, even if I messed up my tabs on one device, it should not have mirrored on the other device. So if I did not touch tab groups and tab order at all, then I definitely shouldn’t have lost all my tab groups. Right?

So is this a bug? It never happened before, only immediately after I synched.

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