Failed to decrypt credentials; Account being logged out from time to time

malikzeeb

I start using Vivaldi on Windows several days before.

I logged into my Vivaldi account and set a "backup encryption key" for synced data.

Today, I suddenly encounter the issue.
In 2 hours, Vivaldi prompted "Failed to decrypt credentials" for 3 times. And I have to log in the account again, and input my backup encryption key again every time.

I have totally no idea what is going on.

I found this post: https://forum.vivaldi.net/topic/72833/an-issue-has-caused-sync-to-stop-working, but there's no solution in the post, and it seems that the post is no longer attracting attention. Thus, I created a new one.

Vivaldi Version: 6.5.3206.39 (Stable channel) (64-bit)
OS Version: Windows 11 23H2 22631.2715

Pathduck

@malikzeeb Hi - in Windows the saved passwords are encrypted using a key from your OS login session (DPAPI) as well as a secret in a browser file (Local State). If this somehow fails, for instance if you change user account or the secret somehow gets deleted, decryption will fail.

The password for Sync is stored like regular passwords in the browser.

When this happens, do:

Check Settings > Privacy > Passwords > Show saved passwords. Make sure there's an entry for vivaldi://settings/sync and that you can view it (click the eye icon).
Check the Chromium internal chrome://password-manager/passwords for the same.
You will be prompted for your OS user password to view the passwords.

Also try using the tool WebBrowserPassView to view your passwords:
https://www.nirsoft.net/utils/web_browser_password.html
This should automatically find Vivaldi's login data file and decrypt the passwords. It's a good way to find if the password decryption is working as expected and/or if you've got duplicates messing things up.

The only reason I can think of that your would be asked repeatedly for your Sync password is if the browser is somehow unable to decrypt it. As to the why this happens, no good idea, could be external "security" tools on your system, or maybe an extension.