Long delay in loading custom search engines
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I have set up quite a few custom search engines - this is probably my favourite Vivaldi feature. However since about a year ago, every time I need to restart the browser my custom list of engines is replaced with a default set (bing/ddg). Eventually my custom engines do appear but it can take literally hours for this to happen. I can't find any previous reports of this behaviour. Is there any way to troubleshoot this problem? How are search engines loaded?
I've installed the custom mod to backup/restore the search engines but whilst the backup works, the restore doesn't appear to so I'm stuck with the default engines until mine are eventually loaded.
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@JeremyHalliwell Hello and Welcome to the Vivaldi Community
I have about 70 search engines, in Sync. I restart the browser several times a day.
Are you using Sync?
You could try in a clean profile, just create a dummy search engine, restart the browser and see if it sticks.
Search engines are stored in the SQLite DB file
Web Data
along with stuff like autofill. Possibly if you have some paranoid security solution that purges this file it could happen. Never seen it myself.I'd probably just advice you to back them up, delete all engines, restore the defaults, restart the browser and restore from backup.
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Thanks, @Pathduck I did set up sync after the first time this issue appeared to try and fix it. Disabling sync again doesn't seem to fix it either. Resetting and restoring the search engines didn't work, I simply wasn't able to restore after the reset.
So I've created a new profile and was able to restore the engines successfully there. The downside is I now have to recreate all the many other customisations, extensions etc from the old profile - looks like copying from the old profile folder isn't the recommended way of doing it?
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@JeremyHalliwell Copying files around between profiles is not really supported.
But try copying the
Web Data
file from the working profile to the old one instead of the other way around.My guess is you've probably tried to insert a backup JSON using the mod from an older version and the data structures have since changed. No idea if that mod even works.
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I'm frustratingly back to square one, after a Vivaldi update/restart the original problem has now reappeared with the new profile I had created, which has been fine for a month or so.
So I tried @Pathduck's suggestion to create a new profile and restore the backup there, and then copy the web data file to the old profile. This is what I'm seeing there now:
Only one of my custom engines is there (ELI5) and the settings UI won't let me add edit or remove entries. Looking at the web data file in SQLiteStudio I can see that all my search engines are there however. So it appears to be some issue with Vivaldi being unable to load the data correctly (although after some time I expect it will do so if it's like before).
Tedious as it will be I think I will have to create a new profile and manually recreate the search engines from scratch, to eliminate the possibility that the backup mod is to blame.
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@JeremyHalliwell I guess copying the Web Data file messed things up, like I said it's not really supported to just copy files around between profiles, it can cause problems.
I have currently over 60 search engines defined, and I've never seen a problem like this.
So I don't really know what you've done to end up in this situation.
I also "back up" my search engines in a plain text file with the needed values so they can relatively easily be restored. Not had to resort to that for a very long time. Bit of a chore the first time, but it's just copy+paste and then they're saved.
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@Pathduck I don't think copying the file messed anything up, the UI shown in the screenshot was similar before I did that and is a symptom of the overall issue I'm having, ie keyword search engines don't work and are evidently not being loaded/activated, at least for a variable period of time, after restarting the browser. Strange that nobody else has reported anything similar, I have a fairly standard Windows 11 set up.
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@JeremyHalliwell I don't have any "quick fix" for whatever's happened with your search engines.
You clearly have several duplicates and also say you can't delete engines. Something has been messed up with the database.
At this point I'd just recommend you reset the engines by clicking "Restore Defaults" after copying out the url values needed to restore them later to a text file.
First try to keep custom engines, if that doesn't clear things they have to go as well. Last course of action if this fails is to delete the
Web Data
file itself, which should just restore a default search engines list. -
@Pathduck unfortunately restore defaults does nothing - the UI seems to be broken. I deleted the web data file and on restart this is what it now shows
Which seems to be a random repeating set of entries rather than the default entries, and the UI continues to be unresponsive. Evidently there is something wrong with the profile which is causing this, but I've no idea what.
The only solution I have atm is to create and set up a new profile from scratch, which I'm hoping I won't have to do on a monthly basis. It would be great if there was a easy way to migrate my other profile settings.
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@JeremyHalliwell Do you have Sync enabled? Sync will get the engines from other devices as well.
The problem might be that the unique IDs don't match. In the
keywords
table there's async_guid
value and this must be unique per entry, if not you'll get duplicates.It's really strange only Bing and Startpage show up after reset, I would've though there'd be more engines (like DDG, Yahoo, Ecosia, Wikipedia etc). Unless you've deleted those? You shouldn't delete the default engines, it could cause problems down the line. If you don't need an engine, don't use it, or just change the keyword.
My advice:
- Do a Reset Remote Data in Sync. This will sign you out of Sync on all other devices.
- Do the delete of the Web Data file again on the "Master" device
- Enable Sync again
- On the other devices, delete Web Data before starting the browser and only then log in to Sync again (you will be signed out because data was reset).
If all else fails, here's a Web Data file from a clean install, with the default engines from my locale:
https://0x0.st/XpuI.zip -
@JeremyHalliwell said in Long delay in loading custom search engines:
It would be great if there was a easy way to migrate my other profile settings.
Sync is the supported way to migrate settings.
Passwords, Bookmarks, Notes and Reading List can be exported and imported. -
No I don't have sync enabled.
I didn't delete any engines after resetting the web data file, (I can't delete anything anyway) and in SQLiteStudio the correct default engines are all there
These repeating entries (bing and startpage) in the UI seem to be a symptom of the issue (previously it was google maps repeated 5 times if you look at the screenshot before).
For transferring settings to a new profile sync wouldn't help: I can transfer bookmarks via the export/import tool, the other items you listed I don't need. What I do need are tab options, appearance, theme, address bar, ad blocking whitelist, location of custom css and downloads etc.
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@JeremyHalliwell I have no idea what might've caused this or how to fix it, sorry.
It might've been the backup JS mod you used. If it wasn't the last updated version for instance, it might've done something weird in your profile. Looks like it was updated last this year but there's been several versions.
Do you by any chance have the backup JSON you got from the mod?
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I do have the JSON backup (is there a way to send/attach files here?). However I only installed that mod after the search engine issue first appeared, as I wanted to be able to backup the engines, and I didn't know about the web data file.
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@JeremyHalliwell You can paste (short) JSON files into the post editor using the code block button
</>
If it's big then I recommend using a pastebin or sharing service.
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It's nearly 600 lines, so here's a file sharing link.
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@JeremyHalliwell OK I was able to restore the JSON backup using the JS mod, no problem and was fine after a browser restart too.
Really strange issue; I just can't understand if you don't have Sync enabled, delete the Web Data file and they still show up broken. Might be some internal data structures in Vivaldi's other data that's been corrupted. The kind of stuff that might happen if you copy profiles around I guess.
Try sending me your Web Data file as well if possible?
Just note that Web Data also contains autofill data as well as saved addresses and credit cards so if you use those you'd need to clear that out first.I'm just grasping for straws here if that's not already obvious
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Here's the web data file from when the issue re-occurred 2 days ago. link.
There was no saved credit card data or anything else to remove - in fact the only tables with any data in are keywords and meta as far as I can see.
When the search engine problem first arose I had never used profile manager, it was using the default profile.
Thanks for your efforts to help @Pathduck . All I can assume is that something in the profile is getting corrupted at some point which is causing the search engine feature to stop working.
I've got a new profile running now with all my settings and added the search engines manually this time and removed the backup mod. About an hour's work as I have a lot of settings so hopefully the issue won't happen again.
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@JeremyHalliwell Yeah the Web Data file opens fine here as well...