Lost my Bookmarks after hitting passphrase reset!

ChakaOfficial

ChakaOfficial

I recently downloaded Opera to my new Macbook -having not used Opera since around end of 2024. I signed into my account no problem, and tried to have my old bookmarks appear in my speed dial. However, i could not find them and also could not see the option for 'Other bookmarks' that we are often told to click in such situations.

Therefore, I did some digging, and ended up going to opera sync - where indeed i could see that my Bookmarks numbered 777, across about 7 devices that i had used in the past (which i now do not have).

I was using ChatGPT to get me to this point and it told me that i should click Passphrase reset in order to have these bookmarks showing. Normally, a reset as i know means the data will be gone, but i did not think much of this because i.e. - "Do not remember your key synchronization password (passphrase)? Reset Passphrase" - makes it sound like i am only resetting my password without necessarily losing anything - just like a password reset for my email if i forget it right??

I signed out of Opera after this but low and behold, when i signed back in, i can only see about 80 bookmarks (down form 777) and 1 synced device (which is my macbook - down from 7 devices).

I inquired further from ChatGPT and Gemini and there was some suggestion to copy paste my bookmarks 'path' blah blah ..It said this:
Step 1
1.Open Opera on your Mac.
2. In the very top menu bar, click Opera > About Opera (or type opera://about in the address bar).
3. Scroll down until you see the section labeled Paths.
4. Look for the Profile path. It will look something like: /Users/yourname/Library/Application Support/com.operasoftware.Opera
5. Highlight and copy that entire file path.

Step 2:

Open that hidden folder on your Mac
2.Click on an empty space on your Mac desktop to bring up the Finder.
In the top Mac menu, click Go > Go to Folder... (or press Cmd + Shift + G).
Paste the path you copied and hit Enter.

Step 3: Look for Backup Files

Inside this folder, Opera keeps local copies of your bookmarks.
Look for files named exactly like this:
-Bookmarks
-Bookmarks.bak (This is your holy grail right now—it's the automatic backup)
ETC.....

However, i do not ant to do any potential further damage and would therefore ask here if there is a way i can rescue these bookmarks, devices having the bookmarks. @leocg

Cheers

burnout426

burnout426 Volunteer @ChakaOfficial

@ChakaOfficial said in Lost my Bookmarks after hitting passphrase reset!:

I was using ChatGPT to get me to this point and it told me that i should click Passphrase reset in order to have these bookmarks showing. Normally, a reset as i know means the data will be gone, but i did not think much of this because i.e. - "Do not remember your key synchronization password (passphrase)? Reset Passphrase" - makes it sound like i am only resetting my password without necessarily losing anything - just like a password reset for my email if i forget it right??

"Reset passphrase" at https://www.sync.opera.com/ means to wipe out all of your Sync data on the Sync server.

In other words, if you have a custom passphrase set at the URL opera://settings/syncSetup to encrypt all your Sync data before sending it to the Opera Sync server, "reset passphrase" means to reset that custom passphrase back to nothing (as in, remove the custom passphrase), which will then make the encrypted data that was created with that custom passphrase useless, so it is removed.

Then, in the default case of not setting a custom passphrase where most of your data is just synced to the Sync server unencrypted except for your passwords being encrypted with your Opera account credentials, "reset passphrase" just wipes your Sync data.

Basically, the website has just be historically confusing.

burnout426

burnout426 Volunteer @ChakaOfficial

@ChakaOfficial said in Lost my Bookmarks after hitting passphrase reset!:

-Bookmarks
-Bookmarks.bak (This is your holy grail right now—it's the automatic backup)

You can open up the "Bookmarks.bak" file in a text editor or JSON viewer/editor and see if all your bookmarks are there. If so, you can disable Opera Sync, fully exit Opera, copy the "Bookmarks" and "Bookmarks.bak" files to your desktop so you have backups, delete the "Bookmarks" file in the profile folder and rename "Bookmarks.bak" to "Bookmarks". Then, that should get your bookmarks back.

Then, you can enable syncing again and see if your bookmarks remain and get uploaded back to https://www.sync.opera.com/.

If your bookmarks disappear when enabling sync, you'll probably have to disable sync again, fully exit Opera, delete the "Bookmarks" and "Bookmarks.bak" files in the profile folder, copy (not move) over the "Bookmarks.bak" from your desktop back to the profile folder, rename it to "Bookmarks" and then also delete the "Sync Data" folder in the profile folder before starting Opera and enabling Sync.

You can also goto the URL opera://bookmarks and use the drop-down at the bottom left to export the current bookmarks you have left to an HTML file as a backup. Then, if needed, you can goto the URL opera://settings/importData, select "Bookmarks HTML file" in the drop-down and import that HTML file.