Restoring bookmarks in your Brave browser.

Through no fault of Brave I needed to reinstall it, which I did (over the old installation) without any initial problems. Though the "Bookmarks" file (no extension) was still in the location used by Brave before, my old bookmarks did not appear once I launched Brave after reinstalling.

Apparently, Brave does not treat the bookmarks file like Firefox and thus it's not sufficient to copy the old file to the correct subdirectory (or not move it from the original location). There's apparently some kind of klugey process of saving bookmarks involving "synch" and getting a key or "password" in the process. You need the key/pwd to reinstall I gather. I didn't go that route as I was thinking "Firefox easy profile management" so I know nothing about it.

Brave will import an HTML version of your bookmarks. However, if you wisely export your bookmarks from Brave before reinstalling and then try to import from that HTML file you get some kind of weird new arrangement with a top folder on your toolbar and then various of your bookmarks in folders marked "Tier1," "Tier2," and "Tier3." This in no way resembles your carefully arranged bookmarks of old. Maybe I did that wrong. I don't know.

You can get a "Firefox result" however in this way IF you happen to have a backup of your Brave bookmarks file called "Bookmarks" or it still can be found in "C:\Users\[User]\AppData\Local\BraveSoftware\Brave-Browser\User Data\Default":

1. Move the file "Bookmarks" to your desktop.
2. Start Brave. You should see a question like "Import bookmarks now?" Answer no or just ignore.
3. Go to any web page and create from it a new bookmark in your new installation. This creates the file "Bookmarks" in the above subdirectory.
4. Exit Brave.
5. Copy your "Bookmarks" file from the desktop to the above directory.
6. Restart Brave.

That worked for me. If it created other problems with my Brave profile/settings I don't know and you can try this at your own risk.

Apparently, if you reinstall, Brave does not recognize the old Bookmarks file. You have to create a bookmark from within Brave and then it creates the file "Bookmarks" and "sees" that file. It doesn't automatically "see" an old file that is there in the subdirectory when it starts up after reinstall. If you create an entirely new file named "Bookmarks" as I described above, Brave apparently "sees" the new file. Brave doesn't care about what's in the file, only that the browser software makes a link to it by your doing something to make that happen, namely, creating that one bookmark. Copying your old Bookmarks file over the new one you just created doesn't disturb the link just created.

My passwords came back too, btw.

I'm lukewarm about Brave. It's fast but its handling of bookmarks isn't like Firefox. With Brave you can't sort bookmarks from what I can tell but rather have to save them through the Brave interface and there they sit. No sorting? The bookmark backup and restore options are complex and basically pathetic. The "new tab" option randomly displays one or two links to some of your favorite web pages but the links change and you've no ability to manage your favorites. Better at Firefox.

Firefox's wokeness infuriates me but I may have to go back if Brave creates any more aggro.