History | Deleted?

[Hadden89]

@Zalex108 Only see current status for history.
Also, only tabs+sessions are stored there. Not the whole history one can have.

[MoosMas]

@Zalex108 Do you mean I should change the 'Save Browsing History' option to something other than 'Forever', restart, change it back to 'Forever', restart? Just making sure I understand it.

[Zalex108]

@Hadden89

That History is 38Mb
Isn't the whole?

Here it's +/- 20Mb

[Zalex108]

@MoosMas said in Vivaldi deleted all history:

@Zalex108 Do you mean I should change the 'Save Browsing History' option to something other than 'Forever', restart, change it back to 'Forever', restart? Just making sure I understand it.

Backup FIRST!

[Hadden89]

@MoosMas Honestly....yes. There are some troubles with forever setting. So keeping last year should be a safer value (but this still will likely remove 2020/2022 entries from the manual backup).

@Zalex108 I moved from forever to last year to mitigate big history quirckness on vivaldi.

[MoosMas]

@Zalex108 Thank you so much! In the snapshots folder, there are a couple of subfolders from previous versions, containing what looks to be backups of data made during updates. The one from the current version (6.5.3206.53) looks the same as the one in the profile directory (C:\Users\{user}\AppData\Local\Vivaldi\User Data\Default, i.e: the history is only ~300 KB big. In the snapshots folder from a previous version (6.5.3206.50 in my case), there is a history file that's 140 MB big, last modified on 16 January. So if I restore that one, I "only" lost about 2 weeks of data. I think this is my best bet for recovering as much data as possible.

Also tried using Windows File Recovery, but it didn't find anything.

I'll make a new profile to copy the history file to, so I can make sure it's working.

Thanks again for your help!

[Zalex108]

@MoosMas

After that,
You would also try merging the History files with SQLiteStudio or similar.

Read here
https://forum.vivaldi.net/topic/83213/guide-internal-v-files

[MoosMas]

@Zalex108 Still curious about your suggestion to change the history setting. My current history file is only around 300 MB in size, whereas my original file was around/over 150 MB. Would I still need to back up this small file, or other things as well?

[Hadden89]

@MoosMas I don't think you need to keep a backup of this 300mb file. If it shows 0 entries is probably corrupted but yeah, still do however.

Then:

• Place your backup file into profile (vivaldi closed)
• Open Vivaldi and switch to last year
• (this will force vivaldi to clean up and recreate the history file)
• Check if everything works now, and only then, switch back to forever (not suggested)
• Check again if things are working.
• Place back again the history file from the backup.

---

Profile files changes often. So consider doing a daily/weekly backup of them to avoid issues.

[MoosMas]

@Hadden89 Thanks for your help! I placed the backup file from 16 January in the Default folder, and now my history is back (up to 16 January, of course). I think this way we've minimized data loss. I'll be sure to back up the important files (history, bookmarks, notes etc) more regularly.

Thanks again for the help!

[mib2berlin]

@MoosMas
Hi, it's maybe to late but extensions can do this.
"Minimal Theme for Twitter/X" Delete user Data
A user report after removing this extensions user data was back.

https://forum.vivaldi.net/topic/93677/vivaldi-lost-all-my-settings-after-restarting-for-an-update

Cheers, mib

[Zalex108]

@MoosMas said in Vivaldi deleted all history:

@Zalex108 Still curious about your suggestion to change the history setting. My current history file is only around 300 MB in size, whereas my original file was around/over 150 MB. Would I still need to back up this small file, or other things as well?

If you have the back up, you can then try things with it, in that case, try the merge if needed.

Otherwise, you could loose data.

[Narushima]

My history also gets deleted regularly now.
It seems like the "stable" versions are just here to introduce pointless features and more bugs, now.

[Zalex108]

@Narushima

When did you do the last Profile Clean up / Reset?

Depending on the usage at least once in a while would be needed.

[iAN CooG]

@Zalex108 said in Vivaldi deleted all history:

Depending on the usage at least once in a while would be needed.

Let's not make people think Vivaldi is this much bugged. This SHOULD NOT be needed.
I only needed to refresh profile years ago several times a week due to a devastating cycle of bugged snapshots that self-ruined the profiles by just opening and closing Vivaldi a couple of times, but after it was fixed - luckily after few snapshots attempts - it was never needed again, and I'm using snapshots since 1.0 release.

If it was actually needed, the devs should give a reliable option to clean up/fix/restore profiles, from a separate tool included in Vivaldi, and not have to manually rename profile dirs, copying only some of the files - the list of files and directories to replace also changes between releases - from old profile to the new one.

[Zalex108]

@iAN-CooG

I've not said that.

There are people entering on whatever sites without AdBlockers or similar, not cleaning the browser noor the system, Installing lots of apps and extensions.

Those are which needs the regular Profile Clean ups which I've referred to.

Don't know about the actual user's case.

[dannii]

@Hadden89 said in Vivaldi deleted all history:

Honestly....yes. There are some troubles with forever setting. So keeping last year should be a safer value (but this still will likely remove 2020/2022 entries from the manual backup).

Hello @Hadden89 ! Do we know if this is only related to Vivaldi on Windows or is it for all OSes? Is there a bug/ticket open about it?
I too depend a lot on browser history and would like to have it set to "Forever" without having to worry about backing it up.

Thanks!

[Narushima]

@Zalex108 Not sure what you mean by "Profile Clean up / Reset".
I've been using ad blockers for many, many years, and my PC is clean from any viruses.

That being said, my history is back, now. Last time I could only see one day, and now it's all there. It's not the first time that happens.

[Hadden89]

@dannii You should wait an internal for that, but I would surprised if never reported.

The reality is not easy to reproduce because:

• may happen (or not) after a vivaldi update which break something (especially on snaps);
• may be caused (or not) by another software (cleaners, antivirus and so on);
• may be caused (or not) by an extension with history permission (cleaners, blockers and so on);
• may be caused (or not) by a wrong setting (data wiping, experimental flags);
• may be caused (or not) by an hardware failure (power loss, disk/ram issue)

Found a similar thread on linux. There were few more in past like this or this other.
The common mitigation over the time is to set One Year (is what I did when the file broke, not having backups of any sort).

[Zalex108]

@Narushima said in Vivaldi deleted all history:

@Zalex108 Not sure what you mean by "Profile Clean up / Reset".

Is to maintain the Profile Clean from Service Workers added by whatever, resetting big unused extensions, (mega was in my case, time ago, occupying 200Mb with no reason), using AdBlockers, rebuilding from time to time, if V gets slow and following Basic Troubleshoot + few other steps doesn't fix the problem.

Read below for Backup too.

--
Avoid Data loss
Follow the Backup | Reset links below

---

Vivaldi Backup | Reset + Extra Steps