Backup and transfer of data in the browser Vivaldi

Hello!

Due to the active process of releasing new Vivaldi assemblies, as well as due to significant changes in browser code, sometimes made by developers, it is often necessary to transfer accumulated data from one version to another. These can be bookmarks, passwords, settings, extensions, sessions - in general, everything acquired by overwork during the time of using the browser. In addition to transferring data, it is quite reasonable to keep backup copies of especially important files so that in case of unforeseen situations, you can restore everything you need as completely as possible.
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Generally speaking, this task is quite trivial and consists of simply copying files from one directory to another, but there are also nuances, as they say. Here we will talk about it today.

Where does everything lie?

This is the first point you need to know. In Windows, all user data (well, or almost all) is stored in the user profile, which is located here approximately at the default installation:

C:\Users\___\AppData\Local\Vivaldi\User Data\

If you installed the browser in Standalone mode (and this is the recommended mode for installing weekly test builds), then you need to search for this folder in the directory that you specified during installation.

In Linux, the situation is similar, only the directory with user data is approximately here:

/home/___/.config/vivaldi-snapshot/

There is no Standalone mode in the Linux version of the browser - we have previously told why this is so , and also suggested ways to circumvent this limitation . But if you used our advice (or knew the solution before), you should already guess where to look for user data in this case.

The most interesting situation for Mac OSX users, due to the fact that Apple cares much more about its users, but here we also found a solution, which was also mentioned a little earlier . In the article on the link you will find information on where to look for custom files.

Hello from good corporation

But not only Apple cares about its users. Google is no less concerned, as fate has become the main developer of the Chromium core, which is used in Vivaldi. However, it would be more accurate to call it “carelessness” - in order to observe political correctness. The fact is that the Standalone installation mode is not provided for in the Chromium code - apparently, the fact that users sometimes prefer to install their favorite applications on USB drives and drag them everywhere with them, Google managers do not know, so some of the users' personal data is stored in bowels of the operating system. In particular, these are passwords stored by users in the browser and used to log on to websites that require registration.

This is perhaps the most unpleasant "nuance", which I mentioned at the beginning of the article. Unfortunately, we cannot bypass this limitation at the moment. To do this, you need to create your own password manager from scratch ( ), and this process is not the easiest and requires certain resources. Of course, we will do it, but not for the first final version, which has long been asking for a way out. So you have to suffer a little and use what you have at the moment.

Closer to the point

So, we now know the main problem. But in fact, it matters only when using the “portable” version of Vivaldi installed on a flash drive, because in this case, all our passwords will remain in the original operating system and will not fall into the other one. Our task today is to save a backup copy or transfer data within one computer. This is done as follows.

Find the folder with user data (as described in the beginning of the article) and copy it to another directory (for data backup). Then we install a fresh build in Standalone mode (by downloading it from the official site ). Now run the newly installed assembly (if it does not start automatically after installation) and close it. As a result of such manipulations, we will create a user profile for this version. Now we copy the previously saved data folder and replace it with the exact same one that is in the profile of the newly installed version. This completes the data transfer.

However, this is not all. I spoke about nuances in the plural for a reason. One we already know. The second nuance is the fruit of the creativity of the developers of the Vivaldi browser. The fact is that even though they, developers, are few, they are terribly hard at work and constantly come up with something new. And, which is typical, all the time they strive to introduce their new products into the browser code. As a result, sometimes the changes are so sensitive that the settings from the old profile start to conflict with the innovations, which can lead to unpredictable behavior of both individual Vivaldi functions and the entire browser as a whole. In addition, innovations may be beyond the responsibility of the old settings and simply do not appear in the application.

You can solve this problem by transferring not the entire user folder, but only important files that save only user data, but not browser data. Such files the more, the more you work in the browser. They are located in the same folder from the profile, but in the Default subdirectory. You can determine which files are important by the names of the files themselves. Here is a sample list of what you may need to transfer:

Bookmarks
Cookies - actually, cookies from visited sites
Favicons - favicon bookmarks and visited sites
History - the history of visited sites
Login Data - logins to sites requiring authorization
Notes - notes
Shortcuts - shortcut key settings
Top Sites - data from visited sites (including sketches of the Express panel)

Etc. etc. Also, if you use extensions, you can copy all the files and folders that have the word Extension in their name, but you need to keep in mind that some browser components are also implemented in the form of extensions, therefore, simultaneously with the transfer of the extensions you have installed, there is a possibility of transferring data, which will conflict with the new version of the browser. In general, there is a large field for creativity and searching by the method of scientific spear.

As a conclusion

In general, it is clear that at this stage, all this does not look very good and requires some manual work and time. I can only say that we do not like it either, and the plans already have tasks for improving both the actual work with user data (in particular, with passwords) and the backup process or transfer of user data from one version to another. For example, for bookmarks, we have already done export-import, allowing you to transfer this data between different versions of Vivaldi. In addition, we also remember about synchronization and we hope to implement this functionality after the release of the first final version. So, as they say, do not switch - you will find a lot of interesting things. :-)