I primarilly use the brave browser, but I don't like updating my browser all the time. But one of my games gave me a warning it was getting out of date (like only 1-3 months without an update, WHY), so I updated it.Poof, can't log into anything as my passwords are gone.
And I have passwords that are random gibberish, so it's not like I can do a Marlins[2016....2023] type password recall system.
So my first thought was does the password file still exist. [I google search for where the file is kept]. And yes, the "Login Data" file still existed and has data! So I made a backup of the file.
Now what do I do with this partially encoded sqlite file. Umm. Many sites just tell user to use some third party password decoder; one that decrypts chrome passwords. I'm like no, that's a huge security risk. Can I do it manually myself? And a quick searched turned up next to nada.
So, I decided to make a backup of Chrome's"Login Data" file. replaced the chrome's "Login Data" with a copy of backup of the brave "Login Data" and behold: Google chrome now had all the login and password information from Brave!
From here, in Chrome's settings:password manager I could export the passwords to a csv file. Then from Brave's settings, password manager, I told it to import the csv file. Once it imported them, I could then use the internet as usual.
If it helps anyone else, great.
Oh yeah, I also gave Google chrome back its old "Login Data" from the backup I made. It's back to normal too.
I suspect that if the same phenomena happens in Chrome, that Brave might be used to salvage it [try a machine that doesn't have your BAT tokens on it]. But it is likely that Chrome is more fault tolerant to lightly corrupted data.