Upgrade to the next generation of Brave browser (brave-core)

[crazy-max]

Some caveats to note before an upgrade to the next generation of Brave browser.

Passwords are not saved

Brave (as Chromium) stores passwords in such a way that they are encrypted in a way tied to current PC. While the passwords are not kept or left behind on the PC itself, they won't be retrievable when you move to a new PC.

Certificates not portable

Brave (as Chromium) has no certificate manager. It uses Windows certificates manager. So, any certificates you install through the Brave interface are stored on the current local machine and will not be portable.

Some settings and extensions are locked per machine

Brave (as Chromium) locks specific settings to a given PC. This behavior is by design by the Chromium team. If you would like this changed, please open an issue on the brave-core repository. A suggested workaround is to sign in to Brave Safe Storage to restore all settings and extensions but this is not available on the current release of Brave.

And as stipulated in this thread :

Brave reset my browser settings

Sometimes, programs that you install can change your Brave settings without you knowing. For your safety, the browser checks if your settings have been changed every time you launch Brave. If Brave notices that something’s not right in your settings, it will automatically go back to the original settings.

Settings that might automatically get reset

• Default search engine
• Homepage
• Startup pages
• Pinned tabs
• Extensions

These issues are specific to Brave due to Chromium's design and not something we can work around without fixes to brave-core.

Import profile data from Muon

The current stable release (0.55) cannot handle migration of profile data from Muon but there is a work in progress. See brave/brave-core#729

Linked threads

• Portable version of Brave browser brave/brave-browser#694
• Portability under Windows OS ungoogled-software/ungoogled-chromium#444

[crazy-max]

@caspertone2003 I maybe have a clean solution with a patch of Chromium. I will open a PR on brave-core repository when my tests are ok.

[bnscv]

Don't know if it is of any help, but Iridium Browser has an official portable version and it's also Chromium based. They recommend creating a shortcut using --user-data-dir=/IridiumUserData.
Links:
https://iridiumbrowser.de/downloads/windows
https://github.com/iridium-browser

[crazy-max]

@bnscv --user-data-dir is not enough. We have to deal with machine ID and encryption otherwise extensions, passwords and settings are not saved across computers. That's why I have created this PR : brave/brave-core#795

[crazy-max]

@caspertone2003 Post a message here if you want to know : brave/brave-core#795

[crazy-max]

@caspertone2003 Nop it's not. I only wait until my PR is approved before resolving conflicts. No need to work for nothing 🙃

[crazy-max]

Give it a try : https://portapps.github.io/news/2019-01-31-brave-portable-0.61.5-45/