Lost bookmarks from the Brave browser and need to restore them? Though revolutionary in terms of creator contribution, ad-blocking, VPN (a virtual private network), and anti-tracking, the web browser can bookmark a page like any other such software over the years. This makes things significantly easier, as you’ll have a general idea of the bar, manager, folders, and, in the best-case scenario, importing the file that stores all this data. Even if you don’t, you’ll quickly realize the procedure is anything but intricate and time-consuming, as it needs to be beginner-friendly. With that acknowledged, we won’t waste a moment more and get into how to recover Brave bookmarks.
1. Transfer Brave bookmarks across devices via Sync Chain
Brave uses a feature called Sync Chain to let users manually configure syncing between desktop and mobile devices. While we won’t get into the minute details, the procedure of syncing desktop and mobile devices usually demands you scan a QR code on the screen of one. In contrast, desktop to desktop syncing requires you to save a unique 24-word “Sync Code”. With that in mind, you can restore bookmarks from another Brave browser depending on the platform this way:
Adding devices to the sync on a computer
Open Brave browser on Windows, Mac, or Linux. Now:
- In the main menu of a computer where you have bookmarks, go to Settings then Sync in the top corner. You can also open
brave://settings/syncin a new tab. - Select Scan or enter your sync code or click the View Sync Code button.
- You’ll now see the 24-word code. Go to your other computer, and follow the instructions to enter the 24-word sync code before clicking OK.
- After a brief syncing period, you’ll be redirected to the “Sync Settings” page. Make sure “Bookmarks” is toggled on. Open a new tab to check if the bookmark bar appeared.
If the bookmarks are on a mobile device, you can open the same menu on a computer, then, while both are connected to the internet, scan the QR code on the computer screen using your mobile device’s camera. Alternatively, enter the sync code from your mobile device on your computer to begin syncing.
Syncing data on mobile devices
Open the Brave browser app on Android or iOS that has bookmarks. Then:
- Tap to open the main menu.
- Go to Settings.
- Select Sync under “Advanced” on Android or go to “Other Settings” then Sync on iOS.
- Choose to Start a new sync chain.
- Scan the QR code on the screen of the main device or enter the sync code as suggested through on-screen instructions.
- Bookmarks will be synced between smartphones or tablets that are listed under “Devices on sync chain”.
2. Recover bookmarks for Brave browser by importing
A nifty feature of the Brave browser is that it not only supports bookmarks from updated and very old versions alike, but also browsers such as Chrome, Safari, Mozilla Firefox, and some Chromium-based ones. As a quick reminder, for this to work, you must’ve exported your bookmarks as an HTML file in the past. To do so, you had to follow the first two steps below. Then, you had to have gone to Bookmarks Manager, expanded More options in the top right corner, and clicked Export. You then had to choose a location for the HTML file.
If you remember doing so or know for a fact you exported bookmarks from other browsers, congratulations. Follow these steps to restore Brave browser bookmarks through importing:
- Click the main menu icon (hamburger) in the upper right corner.
- Select Bookmarks then Import bookmarks and settings.
- Note. You can also open
brave://bookmarksin a new tab or go to Bookmark manager, click the three-dot menu in the top right corner, then select Import. - Once the window opens, you’ll see a drop-down menu below “Import bookmarks and settings” that lets you choose:
- Brave browser (HTML) — select the .HTML file you explored from Brave in the past
- Brave (old) — this refers to the Brave (Muon) profile if you have used one in the past
- Chrome — same as option 1
- Mozilla Firefox — identical to option 1
- Safari — identical to Chrome and Mozilla
- After selecting the browser whose bookmarks you want to load into Brave, select the file, mainly .HTML, and the browser will load the data.
- Don’t forget to put a checkmark under “Select sites to import” for the types of data you want to extract from the file (“Favorites/Bookmarks” is a must).
Safari bookmarks don’t appear after importing into Brave. What now?
If you’ve created a backup on Safari for macOS 10.14.4 and later, you must go through an additional process to extract bookmarks into Brave. That’s because Apple implemented a new security step. Go ahead and grant Brave full disk access on a Mac machine:
- Click on System Preferences in the top-line menu on macOS.
- Go to Privacy (also named Security & Privacy on some versions).
- Select Full Disk Access in the left sidebar.
- Click the padlock and type your system (admin) password.
- Click on Add, then go to Applications.
- Select Brave Browser and choose Open.
- Repeat the steps in the method above.
3. Copy Brave data to the source folder to recover bookmarks
Bookmarks are just one of many kinds of valuable data the browser stores (hint: payments, history, saved passwords, cookies, autofill forms). To avoid hassle with switching between devices, users discovered they can copy the folder the browser uses to store that data. Although a form of unofficial manual backup, if you duplicated the folder in the past, you can simply overwrite the one from a fresh Brave installation. Moreover, you can rename the original one to something like “Default-old” or “Bookmarks-old” as a backup.
Brave stores bookmarks (and other bits of information) in these folders:
- Windows:
<main drive letter>:\Users\%username%\AppData\Local \BraveSoftware\Brave-Browser\User Data\Default(you can copy the entire folder or only two files inside, Bookmarks and Favicons) - Linux:
~/.config/BraveSoftware/Brave-Browser/Default/Bookmarks(for older/testing versions, replace “Brave-Browser” with “Brave-Browser-Beta”) - Mac:
/Users/[Your Username]/Library/Application Support/BraveSoftware/Default/Bookmarks
