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Description of the issue: All open tabs in my Brave session on iPad closed without deliberate action from me. This has happened twice within the past week and the same issue happens when using Safari.
How can this issue be reproduced?
Not sure exactly what is causing it but seems to be related to a second Brave window opening ie - have my main window open, and then I’m in another app and open a web page by clicking on a link in that app eg - Pinterest, RSS app etc. I then close the second Brave window (checking that the first one is still open and has all my tabs) and yet it seems to lose all open tabs. This is difficult to replicate as it doesn’t always behave this way (I have exactly the same problem with Safari). This is similar to the findings noted by @Krzystoff in How Can I Recovery my all tabs of my last session? - #5 by LadyFitzgerald
Expected result: Leave the existing tabs open (or consider options posted by@Krzystoff).
It’s not possible to rely on ‘history’ to restore this information as the list is not complete, there is a lot of repetitive information, and I’m not opening each URL individually in the hope of finding ‘the one’.
I am beyond frustrated with this issue so regularly backup my iPad - and can view the app files. Can someone please advise where open tabs are stored for Brave on iPad so that I can extract the information? Thanks
I apologize though, I don’t have the answer for that question (beyond the obvious, within the Tab Selector Page, which I would say is obviously NOT the answer you’re looking for, I’d assume you are more referring to the deeper/hidden/technical settings?
Guessing here but maybe check out: brave://chrome-urls/ or specifically: brave://ntp-tiles-internals/)
So I’m going to tag in a couple known experts for you and see what they have to say… @Mattches@Saoiray assistance please
(reminder: I’m just a user trying to help and figured having things up to date might help any given situation)
Good luck, I’ll be following, I’m curious the end result
On iPad, Brave does not expose any file that lists your open tabs. iPadOS keeps each app in a sandbox, and tab state is stored inside Brave’s internal app data. This data is not readable or portable in a way that would let you extract or restore specific tabs.
A few points that may help:
Open tabs on iOS are kept in the browser’s session storage, and iPadOS will sometimes clear that data when memory pressure occurs or when multiple windows are opened and closed.
If you are opening a second Brave window through the iPad multitasking interface, iPadOS may treat each window as an independent scene. Closing one scene can cause the system to discard state for the other, which matches the behavior you described.
There is no folder or file within the Brave app that you can browse, even with an iPad backup, that contains a list of your previously opened tabs.
What you can check:
History remains the only recoverable source of previously visited pages within the app.
You can also confirm whether Brave Sync is enabled, since synced devices can sometimes help detect recently opened pages.
Stage Manager (if available). If you use it, apps can create separate windows more easily, which may be why Brave ends up with more than one instance. You can switch it off to keep a single window per app.
I use iMazing to backup my iPad. It’s a fantastic app and allows access to a lot of data that is usually not accessible.
I checked previous support that I received regarding the same Safari issue and extrapolated their recommendation to Brave.
Under Apps\Brave\Library\Application Support\ there is a sqlite database. I opened it and there is a table ZSESSIONTAB. This lists a bunch of sites and URLs. This is sufficient information for me to identify what I need (and what I was hoping someone could advise without me having to faff around).
Clearly this is not a practical solution for most people (me included) and I would really love to see programmers address these issues:
tabs closing unexpectedly
being able to restore a session
I will log this issue under Brave Feature Requests.
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