[UPDATE: FIXED] Favorites syncing not available in Edge Chromium Canary channel

Copper Contributor

Everything went well until I found out favorites not syncing between my 2 PCs in the latest one week or two? Curious enough nobody pointed out. It's OK in Dev channel btw.

 

Update:

It worked again in Canary build .328.

17 Replies
Hi,
I had the same problem,
I found it out by reinstalling Edge insider canary and then I realized all the bookmarks I added recently were not synced

@Xzavier Yes, syncing fails and resets everything. You can still receive favorites from other channels tho. The issue for me has migrated to Dev as well which is very concerning, as that means whatever is causing it is moving up the chain.

@Xzavier I have all three channels, on two PCs, and the sets of Favorites on all 4 installs are completely different. From what I can see nothing ever syncs - I only get an initial Favorites collection, with many duplicates (but not exactly the same).

For me, this is how sync was been in Legacy Edge for years. I had expected the new Edge to be an improvement, but even the new sync engine completely falls on its face. Since not everybody is complaining, I assume that there is something wrong with my (quite old) MS Account, but obviously I can't just change that.

Is there a way to diagnose what goes wrong in sync?

@HotCakeX @cjc2112 @dvdwnd Hey guys. It seems that favorites syncing is back to normal in the latest Canary build .328, but it also created some duplicates. You may try to update and see if it works.

@Xzavier Yup, I can also see some Favorites sync action across all channels now. But like you say, there are a lot of duplicates. I can't for my life see how the sync engine isn't capable of simply merging favorites  with identical name, path, and URL. It's nice to see that there is an extension to clean up the mess (will try it!), but how could we end up here in the first place?

This was also a problem with the original Edge sync engine, which never got fixed.

@HotCakeX Wow! This is exactly what I need. Thanks a lot!

@dvdwnd You are right about the original Edge. As for me, Chromium Edge is a great replacement for Chrome I've been using for many years.

I've tried the extension mentioned above and it really helped a lot. However, we can only count on the official team to fix this issue once and for all.

@Xzavier I too have high hopes for the Chromium Edge, but the devs really need to get their act together when it comes to sync. Any sync engine would have to assume that there will be errors and conflicts, but it should also be possible to reach an "equilibrium" among all sync clients if the user doesn't constantly make conflikting edits. However, that requires merging duplicates and making occasional "full syncs" instead of simply propagating incremental edits. Worst case, I would (very) occasionally see a deleted Favorite reappearing, but never see duplicates or changes on one client never being synced.

However, all Favorite/Read List sync engines so far have failed in the worst possible manner, including deleting everything twice from my account. So, still a long way to go and January 15 is approaching quickly.

@HotCakeX Great tip! I tried it, got rid of all the duplicates, waited for the changes to propagate, only to see every single one (plus two new ones, I think) reappear. So, sync is doing something, but it isn't helpful, and it doesn't even result in all Edge installs having the same set of duplicated settings.

(Sad trombone.)

I understand, well it's all beta now, so I suggest keep your bookmarks/favorites in a different browser such as Google chrome stable, and don't use Edge browser as your main one, or if you want to use it as your main browser but save all your favorites on Google chrome.
I do this personally because Edge sync is not working correctly.

@HotCakeX My Beta is working correctly, and that's why I'm using it exclusively now.

ITS NOT WORKING!!!! I just did the whole uninstall, reinstall, export, import routine on all my devices to make sure its all works (as I've done many times before) and I still get my favorites folders being repeated three times on my android devices. And each instance of the repeated folders have different numbers of bookmarks repeated because there are repeated bookmarks in the different copies of the folders. 

 

I could fix this problem manually if MS had the decency to tell me how many bookmarks are in each folder on my laptop version which doesn't have the repeating problem. Then I could compare with the android versions of edge that do indicate the number of bookmarks in each folder!

 

Is there anyone in charge at Microsoft? I've been using the Dev version since April and now I'm totally fed up even though I've provided feedback on this and other issues. This problem has been there for months and is probably the second most important feature (after displaying web pages) and it still doesn't work. I don't want to go back to Google, but I will if MS doesn't release a properly working version by Jan 15 as promised.

Hey, at least you're not alone, we're all together in this.
just a tip, use Edge browser as your secondary browser. I use Firefox as my main until I'm sure all the sync options are working flawlessly

@HotCakeX 

 

Official response from Microsoft ticket;

 

As regards your request, Kindly know that this has been brought to our attention and it was deduced that this issue is by design and will be worked upon.
 
We apologize for this inconvenience as we know how helpful this feature would have been for you in having the Microsoft Edge Chromium Sync working.
Hmm it doesn't have much to offer, I guess they are saying that it's just work in progress.