Not Saving Saved Passwords

BartinVA

After moving to a new Mac I find that despite prompts to save passwords, they are not saved.

I see in the forum archives from a year ago it was suggested that one's profile needs to be deleted. What and where is my profile and what do I lose by deleting it?

Is doing this the conventional fix, and why a year later is it still a problem?

Thanks,
Bart

hlehyaric

@BartinVA said in Not Saving Saved Passwords:

where is my profile

Users/username/Library/Application Support/Vivaldi/Default

Instead of deleting profile, do a back up of your current profile.

Read this post to learn how to refresh your profile and which files may be copied from your current one to the new one.

BartinVA

This is ridiculous. Here I am at 82, someone who used Opera back in the late 1990s up through version 12 when they went off the rails. After a while with Chrome, when I saw that Vivaldi was stable I switched. But because my iMac was mid-2010 I suffered though the inability to see most videos. Now with a new iMac I find that passwords will not be saved. The short answer is that I do not want to risk trying to fix this problem myself.

My question is whether this bug is in the queue to be fixed. If it is, I will wait for it. Please let me know if this is or is not the case.

Bart in VA

xyzzy

@BartinVA Did you migrate your Vivaldi installation by copying your profile directory from the old Mac to your new one? If so, that's not enough; you also need to transplant the password that's stored in "Vivaldi Safe Storage" in your Keychain. If you don't, two things will happen:

You'll lose access to passwords, autofill data and anything else that's saved and encrypted in Safe Storage.
You could actually corrupt the databases in your Vivaldi profile if you start saving new data with a different encryption key.

To recover, you'll need to transplant the Keychain password to your new Mac, then clear the Vivaldi profile directory on your new Mac, then copy the files again from your old computer.

BartinVA

xyzzy, I moved from old to new computer via the Migration Assistant. As for 1., I am getting autofill information, for example my user names are being filled in as soon as I enter the first character. But not the passwords.

xyzzy

@BartinVA I think that Migration Assistant will transfer the Keychain data over. You can double-check what's actually stored in "Vivaldi Safe Storage" using the "Keychain Access" utility on macOS.

Folks have also tried migrating data using Time Machine backups, but that has caused problems if the backup was taken while Vivaldi was running and its files were in a live state.

There are a few possible options to get things working on your new Mac but first, please verify whether or not "Vivaldi Safe Storage" has the same password value on both computers.

Thanks!

BartinVA

Thanks for helping. No, they are not the same.

Bart

xyzzy

@BartinVA Thanks. I'm torn as to what I'd recommend that you do next. It depends on how complex your original Vivaldi installation is and whether or not it is currently in good working order, what essential data you need to transfer, and your own technical comfort level.

My personal preference is to start with a clean install and then import (or Sync) whatever data that I need. (As an internal tester, I'm constantly trying to find ways to break the browser, crash it, and find the nastiest of bugs so that they can be fixed before any of you even see them. I reset back to a clean state and rebuild on a regular basis.)

For more information about Vivaldi's Sync service, have a look at: https://vivaldi.com/blog/sync-hits-vivaldi-stable/ and https://help.vivaldi.com/article/sync/

If you'd still like to try cloning your original install, you'll need to transplant the "Vivaldi Safe Storage" Keychain password to your new Mac and then transfer a fresh copy of ~/Library/Application Support/Vivaldi from your old Mac to your new Mac. (Vivaldi can't be running when backing up, restoring, or copying this data.)

Keep in mind that cloning installations is not officially supported. You'll be replicating low-level data such as unique install ids, and I have no idea how this will impact things like Sync between your old and new Macs, should you decide to set it up some day.

zedaardv

I find also that Vivaldi on the Mac does not do passwords in a manner that I can rely on. I have one password especially for my DigID that no matter how many times i save it, when i go to use it never fills in and never remember the password.

I've taken to using Firefox as my password backup for my browser since it always works there.

It is little quality issue that really bugs me even though im very happy with Vivaldi overall.
Before Opera decided to give up on the users I could use it as my browser.

Vivaldi is now at 2.4 so I'm hoping that it will soon be at the same level. Having to double browse wit Firefox is unfortunate.

xyzzy

@zedaardv It's possible that your profile's password database got corrupted. Could you please try adding a new Vivaldi profile and testing to see if your password on DigiD saves when using that profile? (Click on the new profile switcher icon, click "Manage Profiles", click "Add Person", ...) The new profile will have its own separate password database.

BartinVA

xyzzy -

I remain puzzled on why this happened to me. I used the migration assistant from a TM backup drive. When the new computer booted I was asked whether to use iCloud key chain, to which I said yes. Why not?

Since I am in a tiny minority, something unusual about how I transferred systems must have happened. However, beforehand I checked several times with Apple Help as well as at the Apple Store when I picked up the new machine.

Unless there is an easy fix for me I will probably carry on as is.

Is this considered a bug that the developers might fix?
Have I any password security vulnerability to working as is for a while?

Thanks,
Bart

xyzzy

@BartinVA Folks have reported problems with Vivaldi after restoring from Time Machine backups. If Vivaldi is running and actively being used while the backup is being made, the archived files could be in a partially-updated and/or inconsistent state. That's why I said to Quit Vivaldi before backing up or restoring its data.

Unless there is an easy fix for me I will probably carry on as is.
Have I any password security vulnerability to working as is for a while?

If Vivaldi is working (well enough) for you, then you can keep using it as-is.