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Description of the issue:
I had to uninstall and reinstall Brave to fix a DRM issue on my Android device. After the uninstall, I discovered it had deleted all my downloaded files since the last Brave installation in 2022, or about 4GB of data.
How can this issue be reproduced?
- Uninstall Brave
Expected result:
Brave should not mark downloaded files as inclusive of its installation. I have never seen any browser do this , and was fairly shocked. Those files belong to the user, not to Brave. This is a fairly serious bug.
Brave Version( check About Brave):
1.73.105 ( latest release)
Mobile Device details
Android Pie version 9
Additional Information:
There was no warning of the deletion of data files at the uninstall. I have tried many browsers, install and uninstall, never have I worried they would delete my files.
@Avatar2go The browser should not delete any downloaded files as they are stored locally. On my end, I’ve tested on both Brave Beta and Release builds on Android and was able to download files, uninstall the browser, then still have the files left on my device after uninstalling.
Yeah, I am mystified as to how or why this happened.
I can only presume that my original installation in 2022 somehow tagged the downloaded files as being associated with Brave. And that setting must have survived many Brave upgrades since then.
Any file in my downloads folder from other browsers, or from the period before I installed Brave, was unaffected.
There was no clue that the files were associated with Brave in the file system, I’m sure I would have noticed that.
Anyway, it was a rude and frustrating surprise. I had backups but was still momentarily shocked.
Can you try testing this for me again if you’re able to? I would be interested to know if it was a fluke of some kind or if it is a bug that needs to be further assessed and fixed on our end.
Is there a way to save my Brave settings and bookmarks so I can reload them them after the test? I just finished getting it set up again. If so I will try it again.
Bookmarks yes but settings no. That said, you can try testing the behavior on the Beta build of the browser which will install separately so no backup will be required.