Session Buddy lost all your sessions? How to recover sessions from Session Buddy

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Did all your tabs in Session Buddy just vanish? Lose all your sessions from Session Buddy? We’ll help you restore them.

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Note: Session buddy launched V4, which is a complete rewrite. Below you'll find tab restoring methods for both session buddy V3 and session buddy V4. Make sure to skip to the session buddy v3 section if that's what you're looking for.

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How to restore lost tabs in Session Buddy V4

Session buddy V3 was written with the Web SQL Database, which soon will be deprecated in browsers. This is why a lot has changed in Session Buddy V4. Let's dive in.

Major changes in Session Buddy V4:

• Previous Sessions are now listed under "history"
• Backup feature has been removed, you must use export now
• Your data from v3 might not have been fully migrated / recovered

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If you don't have any data, previous sessions, or collections (when you previously had many) then you might be able to restore your sessions from V3 into V4. Here are your options

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1. You can use the restore feature to save session buddy V3 saved sessions and previous sessions to Session Buddy V4 collections and history‍
2. You can "import" saved sessions from session buddy V3 to Session Buddy V4 collections

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Use Session Buddy Restore Feature to restore tabs/sessions

Session buddy will try to migrate your data from V3 but it's not always reliable. If Session buddy didn't properly migrate all your sessions into V4, you can try manually restoring those tabs & sessions.

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Find your session buddy V3 database location:

1. Go to chrome://version/ in your browser
2. Copy the "Profile Path" field (something like /Users/<username>/Library/Application Support/Google/Chrome/Default
3. Navigate to this profile path (folder) in your OS's file system
   1. On Windows, paste the path directly into the address bar of File Explorer and hit Enter.
   2. On a Mac, select Go in the Finder menu, then click Go to Folder. Paste the path into the textbox and click Go.
   3. On Ubuntu, select Go in the Files app menu, then click Enter Location. Paste the path into the textbox and hit Enter.
4. From this folder, go to the subfolder named databases. From there, go to the subfolder named chrome-extension_edacconmaakjimmfgnblocblbcdcpbko_0.
5. This folder contains your Session Buddy v3 database file. The file will have a numeric name like 1 or 2, drag the highest number file (in my case it was 14) into the Session Buddy Migration Tool

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Drag and drop this new saved file from the migration tool into the session buddy "restore" feature (Click the gear icon in the top right > click "restore")

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How to restore lost tabs in Session Buddy V3

Restoring Session Buddy sessions from a backup (session buddy V3)

In order to restore sessions from a backup, you must have already created one. Session Buddy is unable to automatically save backup files.

To create a Session Buddy backup click on the settings icon in the top right > then click “Back up”. This will save a file with your current sessions and settings to your browser’s download folder.

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If you’ve already previously saved a backup, you can restore it by clicking on the settings icon in the top right > then click “Import”. In the dialog that pops up, drag the backup file onto the popup OR click “Select File” and import the file from there.

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Once the import status at the bottom of the Import dialog confirms the number of sessions found, click ”Save” to finish restoring the backup. This will add the sessions from the backup file to any sessions that are already present in your Session Buddy.

Don’t have a manually saved backup? Try the methods below to restore your session buddy sessions.

Restoring sessions from Session Buddy local database

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1 First, shutdown and completely quit Chrome on your device

• On Windows: after closing all Chrome windows, check the tool tray for the Chrome icon. If it is present, right-click it and click Exit‍
• On a Mac: shut down Chrome by pressing Command+Q. Check your Dock and make sure there is no tiny dot under the Chrome icon. If the “open” dot is present under chrome, right-click the Chrome Icon and click Quit or Force Quit if this menu item is available.

2 Make a copy/backup of the Session Buddy local user data folder

• On Windows, it looks something like this:

C:\\Users\\<username>\\AppData\\Local\\Google\\Chrome\\User Data\\Default\\databases\\chrome-extension_edacconmaakjimmfgnblocblbcdcpbko_0

• On Mac, it looks something like this:

/Users/<username>/Library/Application Support/Google/Chrome/Default/databases/chrome-extension_edacconmaakjimmfgnblocblbcdcpbko_0

• Ubuntu:

/home/<username>/.config/google-chrome/Default/databases/chrome-extension_edacconmaakjimmfgnblocblbcdcpbko_0

To find your user data folder, copy and paste this into the URL bar of chrome: chrome://version/

1. Copy the Profile Path
2. Enter that path into your file explorer:
3. On Windows, paste the path directly into the address bar of File Explorer and hit Enter.
4. On a Mac, select Go in the Finder menu, then click Go to Folder. Paste the path into the textbox and click Go.
5. On Ubuntu, select Go in the Files app menu, then click Enter Location. Paste the path into the textbox and hit Enter.

‍User data is stored in this subfolder:

databases\\chrome-extension_edacconmaakjimmfgnblocblbcdcpbko_0

→ all Saved Sessions, Previous Sessions, and settings. Make a copy of this one (Save it to your desktop, dropbox, or any other secure file storage)

Current session data is stored in these 2 files:

Local Storage\\chrome-extension_edacconmaakjimmfgnblocblbcdcpbko_0.localstorage

Local Storage\\chrome-extension_edacconmaakjimmfgnblocblbcdcpbko_0.localstorage-journal

→ used to track open tabs and generate Previous Sessions

3 Restore from local database folder

Right click on the user data folder and click “Restore from previous versions”

If “Restore previous versions” isn’t an available option:

1. Click on the user data folder, if there are two files:
2. Rename the lower number file to “1_backup” and rename the higher number file to “1”
3. Restart chrome and see if your sessions are there

If none of these steps work, unfortunately you probably won’t be able to restore your sessions or tabs to Session Buddy. You can post in the session buddy google group, but as you can see this has been a problem for over 10 years with session buddy.

Tired of manual backups, losing sessions and tabs? Switch to a reliable session manager, Partizion to never lose tabs or sessions again.

Upgrade to a reliable, cloud synced Session Manager

Partizion is a cloud session manager that uses local caching and cloud syncing so that you never lose a tab or session — even if chrome crashes, your computer restarts, or any other disaster strikes rest assure Partizion will save your sessions. Since Partizion syncs sessions to the cloud, you can access them on any device.

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