brave-browser: `Person 1` profile keeps coming back after being deleted - Cannot delete the 'Default' user profile

This error is still happening in Version 1.0.0 Chromium: 78.0.3904.97 (Official Build) (64-bit)

There is a workaround:

1. Go to your .config folder (something like /home/youruser/.config/BraveSoftware/Brave-Browser);
2. Backup your Default, Profile 1, Profile 2, Profile 3… folders somewhere else (if anything goes wrong you can restore to your original state);
3. Close all Brave windows, delete the contents of Default folder and move the contents of any other profile to the Default folder. Then you can delete empty folder;
4. Restart Brave.

@FBorowiec @matthiasseghers

That workaround has fixed (or patched) it for me.

still there on Linux - I find it quite annoying. Anyone know of a solution?

Get out of here, Person 1! Hopefully we never see you around here again 😛

Great! I was a bit thrown off by the discussion being closed but figured that might be the case given it was added to the 1.49.x - Nightly milestone. Will report back after updating post-March 7th!

I am still experiencing this issue on Brave “Version 1.47.186 Chromium: 109.0.5414.119 (Official Build) (arm64)” on MacOS 13.1. I am have been regularly deleting Profile 1 and it keep reappearing on restart.

This error is still happening in Version 1.0.0 Chromium: 78.0.3904.97 (Official Build) (64-bit)

There is a workaround:

1. Go to your .config folder (something like /home/youruser/.config/BraveSoftware/Brave-Browser);
2. Backup your Default, Profile 1, Profile 2, Profile 3… folders somewhere else (if anything goes wrong you can restore to your original state);
3. Close all Brave windows, delete the contents of Default folder and move the contents of any other profile to the Default folder. Then you can delete empty folder;
4. Restart Brave.

this is the “solution” i used that works. remember to keep the backups of the profiles.

im surprised its still not fixed after ~3 years :l edit:

Found a solution on Windows:

Make sure Brave application is not running.

1. Go to wherever your main Profile folder is stored, in my case, that folder is stored in: C:\Users\{$Username}\AppData\Local\BraveSoftware\Brave-Browser\User Data

Make sure to make a copy of this folder somewhere safe as a backup!

1. Rename it to Default (I deleted every other profile until there is only my main Profile, named Profile 2)

2. Start your Brave application.

I guess it’s because whenever Brave gets an update and restarts, it tries to find the Default profile, but since some people, like me, deleted the first profile and kept the next one Profile #, it automatically creates a new profile folder Default.

Windows 10, 10.0.19041 Build 19041 Version 1.21.77 Chromium: 89.0.4389.90 (Official Build) (64-bit)

Here’s the proper reproducible steps

1. Start a clean profile
2. Click on people icon and click on Manage people
3. Add a new person in Manage people window
4. Click on Person 2 window and click on people icon, lists Person 1 in the list
5. In manage people window, click on 3 dots of Person 1 and delete it
6. Open Person 2window and click on people icon, still lists Person 1 there. Clicking that will create a new Person 1 window

Here’s what worked for me. In my main profile, go to brave://version and see what your “Profile Path” is. For me it was Profile 4. So I went to C:\Users\YourName\AppData\Local\BraveSoftware\Brave-Browser\User Data\ Make a backup of your Profile just in-case. I cut everything in C:\Users\YouName\AppData\Local\BraveSoftware\Brave-Browser\User Data\Profile 4 and pasted it in and over-write everything in C:\Users\YourName\AppData\Local\BraveSoftware\Brave-Browser\User Data\Default This fixed it for me. Profile 1 no longer gets created.

@cartierjf Please double-check the path. You mentioned “Library” in root. I found the magic place below my user directory.

See: “I went to the folder where the profiles are stored ~/ Users/{username}/ Library/Application Support/BraveSoftware (pressing option in while being in the Finder enables the “Library” point in the “Go” menu).”

~/ is a shortcut for /Users/{username}/

Below is how I solved it in my case. I had two used profiles (let’s call them A and B) and “Person 1” kept appearing in the profile switch.

1. I went to the folder where the profiles are stored ~/Users/{username}/Library/Application Support/BraveSoftware (pressing option in while being in the Finder enables the “Library” point in the “Go” menu).
2. Beneath others I found the three relevant folders: “Default” (which Brave always wants to exist as I learned), “Person 1”, “Person 2”.
3. I closed Brave.
4. I made a backup copy of all three folders.
5. I deleted the content of “Default”.
6. I copy and pasted the content of “Person 1” (which was profile A) into “Default”.
7. I restarted Brave --> “Person 1” was there.
8. I checked “Person 1”'s history and bookmarks --> seemed to be my “A” data.
9. I deleted “A” renamed “Person 1” to “A”.

Happy Brave user restored 🎉

For me it turned out that the pinned shortcut on taskbar might have been actually recreating the profile. Unpinned it and also used the tips from the workaround above to get the profile removed for good, and eventually recreated the pinned shortcut.

In my case, it was a bit tricky because my current profile was the “Default” one (i don’t know if this is normal behaviour), so i renamed “Default” into “Default-something”, openned brave and then the default profile was created. I closed Brave, removed Default folder and renamed “Default-something” back into Default. Also upon reopening several times, I removed Profile1 which was being created every time. I am not sure what action and in which stage the issue was exactly fixed it and I cannot reproduce the issue and the fix now. Hope it helps…

Yeah, will this ever be fixed? I am on mac os big sur m1 macbook.

Got several +1’s on this from https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/issues/14504

Verified this happens on Windows with Brave. Will try to characterize / narrow it down here

Chrome

Here’s what happens w/ Chrome (which works as expected):

1. Delete %USERPROFILE%\AppData\local\Google\Chrome profile root directory
2. Launch Chrome; new folder Default is created (%USERPROFILE%\AppData\local\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default)
3. Created 2nd user Bubba
4. Quit
5. Verified it created Profile 1 folder on disk (%USERPROFILE%\AppData\local\Google\Chrome\User Data\Profile 1)
6. Relaunch
7. Delete Person 1 in the profile manager
8. %USERPROFILE%\AppData\local\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default is not deleted yet
9. Quit Chrome
10. Verify %USERPROFILE%\AppData\local\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default is deleted
11. Check Local State JSON at profile root (%USERPROFILE%\AppData\local\Google\Chrome\User Data\Local State)

      "profile": {
        "info_cache": {
          "Profile 1": {
            "active_time": 1616054098.736232,
            "avatar_icon": "chrome://theme/IDR_PROFILE_AVATAR_41",
            "background_apps": false,
            "gaia_given_name": "",
            "gaia_id": "",
            "gaia_name": "",
            "hosted_domain": "",
            "is_consented_primary_account": false,
            "is_ephemeral": false,
            "is_guest": false,
            "is_omitted_from_profile_list": false,
            "is_using_default_avatar": true,
            "is_using_default_name": false,
            "local_auth_credentials": "",
            "managed_user_id": "",
            "metrics_bucket_index": 2,
            "name": "Bubba",
            "shortcut_name": "Bubba",
            "user_name": ""
          }
        },
        "last_active_profiles": [],
        "last_used": "Profile 1",
        "metrics": {
          "next_bucket_index": 3
        },
        "profile_counts_reported": "13260527680566501",
        "profiles_created": 2
      },
      "profile_network_context_service": {
        "http_cache_finch_experiment_groups": "None None None"
      },
      "profiles": {
        "profiles_deleted": [
          "C:\\Users\\brian\\AppData\\Local\\Google\\Chrome\\User Data\\Default"
        ]
      },
    

12. Relaunch Chrome
13. Go to profile manager; verify no Person 1

Brave

• Following same steps as Chrome
• Steps 1 - 12 work as expected 👍
• Step 13 has the problem 🙀 Relaunching after deleting Default will create Default profile folder again (and then show Person 1 in the profile manager)
• Deleting Person 1 over and over again does NOT add additional entries to profiles_deleted in Local State JSON

Still having this issue as well. Fresh install, no other versions installed before this.

Win 10 x64 Vrave: Version 1.5.123 Chromium: 80.0.3987.163 (Official Build) (64-bit)

I had previously reported this issue on Win10 / Brave 0.70.122, but this appears to be resolved in 1.0.0.

I completely uninstalled Brave 0.70.122 (selecting the option to erase all website data on uninstall), then reinstalled a fresh copy of 1.0.0.

I have the same issue. When I installed Brave, I created +2 new accounts, then deleted the first “original” account. After restarting Brave “Person 1” always keeps coming back.

Brave | 0.69.132 Chromium: 77.0.3865.90 (Official Build) (64-bit) Revision | 58c425ba843df2918d9d4b409331972646c393dd-refs/branch-heads/3865@{#830} OS | macOS Version 10.15 (Build 19A583)

Happening to me on macOS v10.14.5

and

Brave desktop Version 0.66.99 Chromium: 75.0.3770.100 (Official Build) (64-bit)

This seems to be a problem on Linux only. Verified the same steps from https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/issues/4599#issuecomment-499962715 on Windows and it doesn’t show Person 1 option in people menu drop down after its removed.