I recently lost all my Brave bookmarks and data because I didn’t have Sync Chain enabled. I love Brave’s security-first design and the idea of using a sync code, but most users aren’t going to know that’s something they have to manually toggle. There’s no heads-up, no warning—just silence. And if you forget or lose the code? Game over. No recovery. No second chances.
Brave does allow you to sign in with a Google account—but that sign-in doesn’t sync anything. That’s confusing. When I sign into a browser, I expect my bookmarks, history, and settings to carry over. Just like Chrome. That’s table stakes in 2025.
Brave should offer default syncing for core user data—bookmarks, browsing history, preferences—unless the user chooses to opt out. Or at the very least, give users the ability to sync through their Google account if they want it. Let us decide.
Please consider improving the user experience for situations like mine. Losing everything? It’s brutal. The browser itself is amazing—fast, private, clean—but syncing should be more intuitive and accessible. I just want peace of mind: that on any device I sign into, my data will be there. No extra steps. No surprise losses. No regrets.
Back when Chromium allowed syncing through Google accounts, Brave supported that feature. It was part of the default Chromium backend. But in early 2021, Google restricted access to those APIs and cut off sync support for all non-Google browsers, including Brave. This was not a decision made by Brave. Google chose to limit that functionality to Chrome only.
Since then, Brave has focused on building its own privacy-first sync system. It does not rely on usernames, passwords, or cloud-based accounts. Instead, it uses an encrypted sync chain that connects devices directly. This setup avoids the risks that come with centralized logins, but it also means users need to enable it manually.
Think about it. With a traditional Google login, if someone gets your username and password, they can access everything tied to your account. That is a major risk. It does not require hacking Google itself. Account details often leak through unrelated data breaches and are sold on the dark web. Once someone has your login, your synced data is no longer private.
Having all your browser history, passwords, and other details together in one spot makes it a very attractive target for abuse. Again, this is why Brave does not have that and have stated they do not intend to have that type of sync account.
That expectation makes sense, especially if you’re used to Chrome. But in Brave’s case, there is no account to sign into, so if sync was never enabled, there is nothing stored in the cloud to recover. That’s the main difference.
It’s also worth noting that even other browsers like Vivaldi and Firefox require users to actively sign in and enable sync. It is not automatic on those platforms either. You still have to create an account and choose to sync your data. So while Brave handles it differently, the need to opt in to sync is not unique to Brave.
Yes, thank you! It was not my Google account transferring to Brave. I had just been logged in on my Google account while using Brave Browser. I wish there was a special thing you could do, if you didn’t happen to enable the sync chain. I love that feature of having a code, but it makes it hard if you lost access to the device you had all your Brave information on, and didn’t get a chance to enable the sync chain. My computer died on me, and the hard drive is showing no media. I don’t know how that happened, and I should’ve enabled the sync chain right away. If there was a way to recover lost information, without a sync code, on a completely different device, it would be ever so amazing.
@Sunny50 I understand and agree it can be frustrating when such things are lost. In my prior reply I just tried to explain why Brave has decided to do sync as they are. I do agree they should make some changes, such as not having the constantly changing sync code, but we will have to see what they decide to do for the future.
For now though, the best advice I can give you is that you always do backups. This isn’t just for a web browser but for any device. As you mentioned, our devices can always break or have corruptions. When that happens there often is little to no way to recover all of this critical data that was saved on it. For this purpose there are external drives and/or cloud storage available that we can perform backups to.
For things like passwords which use special encryption keys, it would be necessary to export them into a CSV to save. Or instead of using the web browser which can be more limited in storage, some people find external password managers like Bitwarden or 1Password which can be used on almost any device or browser.
You mean no files at all? If the hard drive is accessible and not corrupt, you should be able to recover practically everything but your passwords. The passwords would be encrypted, so only recoverable if it was the same device and user, but with the computer dying on you then this would have caused the encryption key to be lost.
