I’ve run searches within the browser (Brave Help Center – Desktop Browser) and in two search engines (Brave and Qwant) and I haven’t found any clear explanation of what Profiles are or how to use them.
There are ‘hits’ in Community but those are specific to certain issues and/or ‘how I use Profiles’ type presentations, not any kind of general reference.
Am I missing it?
Are you talking about just the normal browser profiles? If so then you can think of those as kind of accounts for the browser. Each of the profiles would keep history, bookmarks, passwords, and some of the basic settings all separately. The only thing is they are not password protected or have any particular logins so it would just be an easy matter of switching. But it could be good like if you wanted a personal profile that would be all your personal accounts and then maybe another for your like work or school. Or of course if you could have one profile for yourself and another for a relative that’s using your device.
Just to stress that again though is that each profile would not be kept private or secured from anyone on the device and is easily swapped to. It’s just a way of sorting those types of information or settings for convenience.
This exists on just about every single browser that exists. Whether you’re talking about Firefox, Brave, Chrome, Microsoft Edge, or whatever. Well, at least on desktop.
Is there anything in particular you’re trying to figure out with it? I mean in general it’s just the idea of creating a new profile via the hamburger menu if you want to create one and then it’s just clicking on the icon and tapping on it to switch.
@Saoiray Thanks. At the moment my interest in Profiles concerns seeing whether problems experienced in the default Profile are absent from a comparison Profile (based on a suggestion from @Mattches in another post).
Going by what’s displayed in the Bookmarks dropdown, it appears that switching to a pre-existing Profile brings in all the bookmarks that were either created or imported into that Profile – i.e., they now also display in both Profiles’ Bookmarks dropdown.
Is there a way to keep bookmarks in their own Profiles so they don’t display in other Profiles?
And now that I’ve got them displaying in both Profiles, how do I get rid of the ones that were brought in via the comparison Profile so I only see the original bookmarks (the ones that were in the default Profile) in the Bookmarks dropdown?
I’m sorry, I am unclear about what are you talking about here. Each profile can and does have it’s own set of bookmarks. I’m also not sure what you mean when you say “bookmarks dropdown”.
This is already how it works. I have some 100s of bookmarks in my main profile – here is a profile I use to test things where I have saved a few bookmarks as an example. Observe that only those bookmarks display:
That’s how things work now. Each profile has their own bookmarks, passwords, history, extensions, etc.
The only things shared between them are changes to brave://flags, system toggles like Graphics Acceleration, and any custom Shields content filter rules added at brave://settings/shields/filters.
I am a bit confused on the question here. On one perspective it sounds like you are saying if you create a new profile then it has all your bookmarks. This should not be the case unless you have Group Policy set up or have made some modifications somewhere. But this is definitely not how things generally work.
The secondary way I am perceiving your question is that you created something of a test profile and imported your bookmarks over to it. Now you want to know how to remove just the bookmarks you imported over but you want to keep anything else?
Also keep in mind if you ever used sync, they will replicate each other. There’s no real reverting back to anything prior to the sync chain. Though at that time they would be equal to each other and you could always delete one of the profile if you so desired.
If none of that seems to align with the question, could you try to share detailed instructions on what you are doing to see what you are and perhaps share some screenshots?
@Saoiray Now I’m the one who’s confused. All I meant to communicate was that when I switched to Profile 2 (just to test some issues that were occurring in Profile 1), after returning to Profile 1 I noticed in the Bookmarks dropdown menu at the top of the page that I was seeing not only the bookmarks in Profile 1 but also a whole slew of other bookmarks. All of those bookmarks are very old and I don’t have any use for them currently. So my question was how to get back to the bookmarks display I originally had in Profile 1 – i.e., only the bookmarks in that Profile.
@mattches Please see my reply to @Saoiray. The dropdown is the menu of bookmarks that displays when ‘Bookmarks’ (at the top of the screen) is clicked on.
Switching to Profile 2 – at least I think that’s what caused it – brought in a lot of bookmarks that I don’t need or want. These were added to the bookmarks in Profile 1. I would have expected just to see the bookmarks ‘attached’ to Profile 1 when in that profile.
After re-checking, I am seeing old bookmarks (from long ago) mixed with current bookmarks in Profile 1. There are no bookmarks displayed in Profile 2, which is what I would have thought before my original post. I’m not sure what happened but something is definitely ‘off’. There is no reason that all those unwanted bookmarks should have been imported to Profile 1. I did not do any kind of importing. The only unusual thing I did was switching between Profile 1 and Profile 2, something I have done only rarely.
Please quit Brave entirely. Then relaunch with Profile 1. Go in the browser (not the ribbon at the top) and go to Main menu --> Bookmarks Manager. Here you should only see bookmarks saved/associated with Profile 1.
Is that the case for you?
@Mattches No, still seeing the composite of:
(i) the bookmarks that were in Profile 1 before I opened Profile 2, and
(ii) those old bookmarks from long ago.
The oddest thing is that there are no bookmarks in Profile 2.
So what caused the old bookmarks to end up in Profile 1?
I honestly have absolutely no idea. It’s literally not possible to add bookmarks to a profile by creating another profile. The action of adding a profile does exactly that – creates a new browser profile separate from your main/default profile with no data associated with/in it.
The only way bookmarks (or any data) could be added to your profile is if you imported them or if you have Sync enabled and some bookmarks data was synced
@mattches A new profile wasn’t added. Profile 2 already existed, it just had no data as far as I know. That said, it’s not impossible (though highly unlikely) that the old bookmarks were linked to that Profile (Profile 2). Even if that was the case they definitely weren’t in Profile 1, which is where they are now. Profile 2 now shows no bookmarks.
I didn’t do any bookmark importing. I’m not sure I’ve ever done that. I’ve exported bookmarks, but saw no reason not to keep them in separate files, so I’ve just worked with existing bookmarks, or added them as needed, within Brave (not by importing).
I’ve never used Sync, which I assume refers to syncing on multiple devices. I only have my MacBook Pro. I took it to the Apple Store four days ago and everything (hardware and software) passed diagnostics. (A declining battery may be implicated in system slowdown issues I’ve mentioned in other posts here, but that wouldn’t be relevant here.)
Anyway, is there a way I can ‘undo’ the addition of the old bookmarks in Profile 1, without deleting them one-by-one?
Thanks.
No you’ll have to delete them manually unfortunately.
As I said before, there’s literally no way whatsoever for bookmarks to appear in your main profile simply by opening another profile unless they were Synced, bookmarks were imported, or perhaps some 3rd party extensions that handles this data in some way.
Not sure what else to do/tell you about this without more information.
When you originally installed Brave Browser, the initial (aka default) BB user profile name is “Profile 1” and that BB user’s data is stored in the Default folder:
/Users/yourusername/Library/Application Support/BraveSoftware/Brave-Browser/Default/
When you created the 1st additional BB user, that BB user profile name is typically “Profile 2” and that BB user’s data is stored in the Profile 1 folder:
/Users/yourusername/Library/Application Support/BraveSoftware/Brave-Browser/Profile 1/
When you created the 2nd additional BB user, that BB user profile name is typically “Profile 3” and that BB user’s data is stored in the Profile 2 folder:
/Users/yourusername/Library/Application Support/BraveSoftware/Brave-Browser/Profile 2/
The Bookmarks files are in JSON format. On the Mac, you may safely examine the contents of a backed up Bookmarks file, by using a JSON viewer, such as the OK JSON app (‘https://apps.apple.com/us/app/ok-json-viewer-formatter/id1576121509?mt=12’).
BTW, you could open all three of the BB user profiles folders, and arrange the windows so that you can observe the Modification Date of each Bookmarks file.
Then, you could use a BB user profile and create a new bookmark, and observe if the Modification Date of that BB user profile’s Bookmarks file changes (it should) . . . but the Modification Date for the other 2 BB user profiles’s Bookmarks files should NOT change.
You could test that process, for each of your 3 BB user profiles.
@289wk Many thanks for that. I am going to try going through it, but does it suggest a possible way that bookmarks can get into a different profile (i.e., from Profile 2 to Profile 1) without any action by the user to put them there? That is what has happened.
Btw, I’ve never had more than two profiles and have to the best of my recollection only used Profile 2 for troubleshooting – i.e. to compare browser behavior to that in Profile 1. So I’m not even sure how the bookmarks in Profile 2 got there. The only thing I can think of: All of the bookmarks in question (the ones that were not previously in Profile 1) are old. There was a time in the distant past when user bookmarks got erased (probably during the transition to the Chromium engine). But since in that case there were no longer any bookmarks in Profile 1 I don’t know why I would have imported bookmarks (possibly from Chrome or from a previous Brave bookmarks export file) into Profile 2.
Does this – “When you created the 1st additional BB user, that BB user profile name is typically “Profile 2” and that BB user’s data is stored in the Profile 1 folder” – indicate a possible way the bookmarks from Profile 2 can end up in Profile 1 – i.e., through a kind of data mixup?
It does not – this is, as stated before, not possible. Unless via Sync, manual importing, or moving User Data around in the BraveSoftware directory, there’s literally no way for bookmarks to “jump” from one profile to another.
To clarify:
Profile name = what the profile is called when you go to open it in the browser – for example, in this image, I’ve created several dummy profiles with names like Test 1, Test 2, etc:
Profile folder/directory = This is what you see when you go to your User Data folder (~/Library/Application Support/BraveSoftware/Brave-browser\) and look at your profile data. Your “main” profile (the first profile created when you install and launch the browser) should be called Default.
Each additional profile created after this will be called Profile x where “x” is the number of additional profiles you’ve created. So for example if you create 2 additional profiles, you’ll have a Default folder, then Profile 1 and Profile 2. If you then go and delete Profile 1 and Profile 2, then open the browser and create two more profiles, you’ll then have your Default folder, as well as Profile 3 and Profile 4.
I have created and deleted several profiles on this particular Brave instance, so my numbers are a bit wonky, but follow the same conventions:
@mk7z If you only have two and have only ever made two, then when you look in there, you should see a Default profile folder and a Profile 1 folder.
Now – what are the actual names of your profiles and their associated folders in ~\Brave Software\Brave-Browser\?
@mattches Many thanks for all that detail. I’ll have to try to get through it over the weekend.
Since your original post (the one I’m replying to, before you added to it) I’ve been looking for the User Data folder but can’t find it.
Screenshot below shows files in ./Library/Application Support/BraveSoftware/Brave-Browser/Default/.
There isn’t a folder beginning with ‘U’.
Am I in the wrong place?
No, apologies for the confusion. The Brave-Browser folder is your user data folder. So you should see your Default folder, which you did in Brave-browser – do you see any folders named Profile [x] where x is a number?
@mattches If you mean in that folder, I don’t. Those would, i assume, be between PreferredApps and publisher_info_db [?]
Looking in the parent folder (of “Default”) there is a “Guest Profile” and a “Profile 2” folder but no others (except “System Profile”).
The only subfolder in “Profile 2” with “Brave” in its filename is “BraveWallet”.
./Library/Application Support/BraveSoftware/Brave-Browser/Profile 2/
No references to “Brave” in the “Guest Profile” folder.
Perfect – so you only have Profile 2 and your Default. This means that at some point, you did create a profile other than the one you have now. You can tell because it is named Profile 2 – if it were the first additional profile you’ve every created, it’d be named Profile 1.
As such, Profile 1 must have been deleted already and therefore all it’s data deleted as well. You now only have your Default profile and Profile 2 so there is no way that any bookmarks contained in previous browser profiles could be pulled into your current profiles.
I don’t know if it is an extension you have installed or something related Sync maybe but as I stated before, it’s literally not possible for this to happen outside of user action and/or an extension.
@Mattches I’m not following you. I’ve noted previously that I had an additional Profile (Profile 2).
Profile 1 could not have been deleted because it’s still active. I’m in it right now.
The ‘old’ bookmarks were pulled in as ‘additions’. The original Profile 1 bookmarks are still there in Profile 1.
Nothing has been lost. The issue is just the addition of the unwanted bookmarks that ended up in Profile 1, though not by any action I had taken. (I am seeing similar posts about this that I’ll document later.)
