Description of the issue:
Brave deleted all my saved passwords, how to recover?
Windows 11
@slightly-annoyed we will need a lot more information from you before we can troubleshoot this issue. When you opened this thread, there was a template with a few questions for you to answer that help Support get a better grasp on user’s issues – you appear to have deleted all of them.
If you’d like to add [a lot] more detail to your issue I’ll be happy to assist.
You mean this? :
NOTE: Any “one-liner” or topics requesting support or reporting bugs that do not make an effort to include as much of this information as possible will not be responded to. Repeatedly posting as such is grounds for banning._
Please** try to adhere to this template when reporting bugs. If you think you don’t need to fill out every section in the template fill out as much of it as you can and please be as descriptive as possible when posting.
<---------Delete this line and everything above before posting---------->**
Description of the issue:
Steps to Reproduce (add as many as necessary): 1. 2. 3.
Actual Result (gifs and screenshots are welcome!):
Expected result:
Reproduces how often:
Operating System and Brave Version(See the About Brave page in the main menu):
Additional Information:
_____________________________________________________________________________________________
Description: done.
Steps to reproduce: How would i do that and why would i do that? I suppose use BRAVE and… well I just don’t know… turn it on and off again, i guess.
Actual results: Refer to the above.
expected results: What would you think? I think it would likely delete the passwords again in time.
Reproduces how often: How many times do i need to lose all my passwords before i get a working fix or ability to recover?
Operating system: Stated above.
Brave version: 1.81.136 (Current)
I really hope the current Brave version helps get a better grasp of this users situation.
Okay, lets go over some things that you didn’t mention in any of the above:
- You say it deleted your passwords, but is all of your other data there (bookmarks, history, etc)?
- Have you made any changes to your OS and/or system password recently? I ask because if so, it may be related to this: https://support.brave.app/hc/en-us/articles/29808985123085-Sensitive-data-storage
- You say “how many times do I need to lose[…]” – are you implying that this has happened before? I only see one thread opened from you here on Community. How many times has this happened before?
- Did the issue occur immediately after the latest update?
- Are you able to save passwords in the browser presently if you were to try?
all passwords are gone, all bookmarks, etc remain.
OS and passwords are the same.
No. This is the first time ever for any browser to lose passwords.
If the update was within the last 48 hrs or so then probably a yes.
Yes new passwords save.
@slightly-annoyed this is most likely related to a known issue but one people haven’t been able to narrow down to a cause. Overall there’s no solution. Long story short, Brave and other Chromium browsers use something called OSCrypt which relies on the device keychain/keyring. For Windows this is DPAPI, Windows Data Protection API (Application Programming Interface)
Basically it uses your OS credentials to create a unique encryption key that nobody but you have via your setup. But for some reason people are sometimes seeing this change either during Windows updates or restarting their device. As it changes, Brave checks for this key. When it can’t find it, then it means it can’t unlock the encryption. It tends to then generate a new key based on your current DPAPI, which is why you’re able to save new password and then it works well. But this also means the prior files containing your passwords remain locked and can’t be opened.
And there’s nothing built in to bypass this. If they key is lost, it’s kind of gone forever. The workaround is to make sure you always have sync enabled. When this happens, it’s able to fetch the passwords based on what you had synced/saved and populates again. But when you’re only keeping them locally, there’s no hope.