I’m using Brave Version 1.78.102 Chromium: 136.0.7103.113 (Official Build) (64-bit) on a Windows 10 computer and I’m using Microsoft’s robocopy to copy the “C:\Program Files\BraveSoftware\Brave-Browser” directory to another Windows 10 PC and also robocopy the “C:\Users<username>\AppData\Local\BraveSofware\Brave-Browser” directory as well.
If I start Brave on this second PC then it starts fine and even has the same tabs open as the source PC at the time the robocopy happened but the two extensions that are installed on the source PC are not visible in the header bar of Brave, neither are they in “manage extensions” even though the “C:\Users<username>\AppData\Local\BraveSofware\Brave-Browser\User Data\Default\Extensions” directory and its contents has been copied across OK .
If fact, after a time, the two folders for the two extensions in the “Extensions” folder delete themselves whilst Brave is running on the second PC.
How can I get the copy of Brave on the second PC to realise it has two extensions after the robocopy and incorporate them into Brave on first startup after the robocopy ?
I think this is a limitation of Robocopy itself. To be honest I’m not entirely familiar with the software (Robocopy) but I would suspect that if you were to try this same thing with Chrome/another Chromium browser w/extensions installed you’d get the same results.
All the files in the two directories are copied across. I don’t get why the extensions aren’t incorporated into Brave on the 2nd PC when you start up Brave.
As I stated before I’m not super familiar with Robocopy, but I suspect that this is not a Brave specific issue and that if you were to perform this same operation with a different browser (Chrome, MS Edge, Opera, etc) with extensions, you’d see the same behavior.
I will reach out to some of our Windows team members to see if anyone can share some insight on this but I’m not sure there will be much to be done about it if it is in fact an issue/limitation of Robocopy.
I don’t understand how it could be robocopy’s fault if it copies all the files across.
I don’t HAVE to use robocopy - is there a definitive way of copying one installation of Brave to another Windows PC that completely works ( both PCs are Windows 10 ) ? Including copying extensions and the last set of session tabs when you started the copy ?
Well I’m not actually sure if it is or isn’t. One way you can quickly test this as I mentioned before is try installing an extension or two in another browser and try using Robocopy to copy the files the same way you did with Brave and test to see if they were carried over as well. If they are, then the issue lies with Brave. If not, then it’s a limitation with Robocopy.
You can use Brave Sync to do this:
https://support.brave.com/hc/en-us/articles/360021218111-How-do-I-set-up-Sync
I’m going to try a straight copy and and paste of the two directories via a USB drive. If that still has the problem then I think that proves the issue is with Brave.
OK, I just copied the entirety of “C:\Program Files\BraveSoftware" and “C:\Users\AppData\Local\BraveSofware" onto a USB off one Windows 10 computer. Via a Windows “Copy/Paste” method.
Stuck the USB in another Windows 10 PC and deleted its existing “C:\Program Files\BraveSoftware" and “C:\Users\AppData\Local\BraveSofware"
Then did a Windows “Copy/Paste” action to put the contents of the USB onto this 2nd Windows 10 PC.
Started Brave and the problem still exists - it doesn’t acknowledge the 2 extensions exist that were on the original PC. But it does start with the same session tabs that were open on the source PC.
I did a “Properties” action on the source PC to get the number of files and folders and that matched the number of files and folders put onto the USB and the 2nd PC.
I think that proves the problem is with Brave.
Just did the above “Copy/Paste” via USB to transfer Google Chrome between 2 Windows 10 computers and it’s a worse result than Brave. It didn’t even start with the session tabs open.
But the crucial thing is it didn’t transfer extensions either - so this is a Chrome issue I guess, not particularly a Brave issue.
However with more Googling I found you can load the extensions into Brave from the “…Default/Extensions/<extension_gobbledegook_name/<extension_version_number>” directory by going to Brave’s “Manage Extensions” page. Turning on Developer Mode in the top right toggle. Then click “Load unpacked” from the top right. You get a file requester and you should navigate it to the <extension_version_number> directory above and click “Select folder”. The extension will be installed. However for some reason you have to keep developer mode switched on all the time from now on otherwise all the extensions you load this way will be removed from Brave if you turn developer mode off.
You’re better off just reinstalling them from the extension store.