History | Deleted?

[MoosMas]

Vivaldi deleted all history

Hello,
I'm sort of panicking right now. I just restarted Vivaldi, and noticed my entire history got deleted. Is there any way I can get it back? Like a backup file/snapshot? I back up my stuff regularly, but the last backup of the history file is from 14th of December. My history went all the way back to 2020. vivaldi://sync-internals also lists the history as 0. I'm using version 6.5.3206.53.

I've searched for other threads and read what people suggested, but haven't found anything that worked for me.

Please, spare me your "you shouldn't keep such a large history" opinions. The history is important to me, and I would really appreciate any advice on how to recover it.

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ModEdit: Title

[Hadden89]

@MoosMas If you have your old history file dated on 14th you can just try to put back in the profile folder.
Also ensure history is not checked from periodical removal (ctrl+shift+del):

I fear history from 15th dec to 04th feb is lost if you don't have backups local or remote of this period.

[Zalex108]

@MoosMas

Hi,
You would list what doesn't worked.

There were some reports (mine too) regarding the History changes and QR on Sync'd Tabs.

Backup your History File
Change your History Save time to another option
Restart V
Change back to your preferred time
Restart V

Check back again

[MoosMas]

@Hadden89 Thanks for your reply. Putting the backup file back was indeed my plan B, but I was hoping there was a way to get the history from 15th dec to 4 feb. I had hoped Vivaldi saves some kind of snapshot history of your data (either locally or through Sync), so you can always roll back in these situations. I have unchecked the history from deletion. I sometimes use chrome://settings/ -> Privacy and Security > Clear Browsing Data to free up some space, but I make sure only the cache is cleared.

[Hadden89]

@MoosMas Ok, so you might get back most of your history with plan B. Sadly, I don't think you can reclaim very recent history because is not stored locally (history file is only for current status) or remote (sync).

[Zalex108]

@Hadden89 said in Vivaldi deleted all history:

@MoosMas Ok, so you might get back most of your history with plan B. Sadly, I don't think you can reclaim very recent history because is not stored locally (history file is only for current status) or remote (sync).

There's the Snapshot's Folder, but seems related to some users only.

[Zalex108]

Not sure if History is saved too.

https://forum.vivaldi.net/topic/94703/guide-recover-sessions-workpaces-after-upgrade

[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.

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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.