Hello. I am new to Brave, switching from Vivaldi because it is totally unreliable. I have several questions about how sync works because it differ from Chrome/Vivaldi.
First
I am used to log in into my account and have my bookmarks and extensions automatically downloaded. Brave uses “Sync chain” term that makes me frustrated.
Imagine the situation: I have only one Brave instance and only one Chrome/Vivaldi instance on my PC. My PC is broken and inaccessible.
For Chrome/Vivaldi I just log in into my account on my new PC and I am good.
But what about Brave? I have never set up any “Sync chain” because I had no new PC before. Does that mean that my bookmarks are lost? What is the point of using such sync then?
Second
Neither Chrome nor Vivaldi can sync browser settings and I have to manually configure it any time I install it on a new machine. What about Brave? Does it also sync only bookmarks/extensions, or is it capable of syncing user settings as well?
Thank you.
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@fires3as0n
First
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Sync is not intended as a backup. Its sole purpose is so you can share data between devices.
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The point of using it is for convenience as we go from phone to desktop, or home to work.
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If you only have one device and it breaks and is inaccessible, then you would not have any of your data unless you have performed manual backups to an external drive or cloud.
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The reason why Brave differs compared to others on this is because it’s a privacy browser. Google has had accounts hacked and information stolen. I’ve actually had my Google account hacked before and had to fight like heck to get accounts back and charges to my credit card voided out. Many password extensions have also had vulnerabilities where user data was leaked. Brave decided they wanted as few possibilities for data to be stolen as possible. While other companies put more value on convenience, Brave went more on privacy & security.
Second
You can take a look at Brave’s settings to see what is synced. Screenshot of it all is below:
I do want to point out that while it syncs extensions, it does not sync extension settings as that’s not something within the browser itself. So you would have to make adjustments there.
About questions on settings syncing, I haven’t paid any mind in a while. Long ago it was very little that synced, but I’m not sure if they have improved.
Things like open tabs won’t automatically open tabs, but it lets you navigate to a menu to see all open tabs on your devices.
Note
One of my answers is a bit misleading, but let me explain. When asking about the scenario of having only one device that gets broken and is inaccessible, I mentioned data might be lost forever if you hadn’t done a backup. However, if you had saved your sync code, you could still potentially get your data.
The reason why I didn’t mention is because it used to be a static code that never changed. Unfortunately this created a lot of issues as many did not heed the warnings of not sharing these codes with others. As this became an issue, Brave moved to make codes expire daily.
Fast forward just a bit and a significant amount of users started complaining because they were trying to rely on sync as a backup and got angry they could no longer get their data. As a result, Brave went for a temporary resolution to have a 25th code that changes daily and has provided a resource to get that word. This still has existing sync codes expire daily, but it’s not hard to get that 25th word and gain access, so long as you have the rest of the code.
That long story said, it also has been said that sync eventually will be changing again to remove access to phrase discovery. Again, because sync is not intended to be a backup and they want to try to help keep our data secure. More than a year has passed since this warning was given, but I still like to get people to be of the mindset so when/if they change it, we aren’t unprepared as had been last time and people aren’t being reliant on sync for a backup.
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Thank you a lot for a detailed explanation. It is very appreciated.
Looks like this browser will not satisfy my needs, I don’t care about privacy that much but rather about stability.
What I liked in Brave compared to Vivaldi is vertical tabs, client for iOS, and that it works much faster, but looks like going back to Chrome is the only option left ;(.
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