Session Buddy Lost Your Sessions? How to Try Recovering Your Data

If you opened Session Buddy after an update and found your saved sessions gone, two things are true: it wasn’t your fault, and the data may not actually be gone. The v4 rewrite’s failed migrations lost track of data more often than they destroyed it. Recovery isn’t guaranteed — but before you grieve years of saved research, spend twenty minutes on this checklist, roughly in this order.

First: stop and understand what happened

Session Buddy stored your sessions locally, inside your Chrome profile on disk — never in a cloud account. The v4 update (forced by Chrome deprecating the old Web SQL storage system) had to migrate that local database to a new format, IndexedDB. Where the migration failed, the common outcome was an extension pointing at a new, empty database while the old data still sat on disk beside it.

That’s the hopeful scenario. The discouraging one: the longer you’ve used the extension since, and the more cleanup tools have touched your profile folder, the higher the chance the old data has been overwritten. Which is why the first rule of any recovery is do less: don’t reinstall the extension, don’t run disk cleaners, don’t “reset” anything until you’ve worked through the options.

Step 1: check inside the extension

Recent Session Buddy versions added backup and recovery affordances after the backlash. Check the extension’s own settings/gear menu for anything named backups, snapshots, or recovery, and check whether an older “previous sessions” view still lists anything. If you ever used its export feature — even once, long ago — search your Downloads folder for those files (session as a filename search gets you started).

Step 2: the developer’s recovery path

The developer published documentation for exactly this situation, including where the data lives and how to attempt recovery from the old database (sessionbuddy.com’s FAQ and data-location pages). This is the highest-percentage route because it addresses the precise failure mode: an intact old database the new version isn’t reading. Follow it before anything improvised.

Step 3: your Chrome profile on disk

The raw location, for the technically comfortable: your Chrome profile folder (on a Mac, ~/Library/Application Support/Google/Chrome/Default/; on Windows, %LOCALAPPDATA%\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default\) contains per-extension storage directories keyed by the extension’s ID. Old Web SQL data lived under databases/, IndexedDB data under IndexedDB/. If files exist there with sizes in the megabytes and old modification dates, your sessions are plausibly inside; copy the entire folders somewhere safe first, then work on copies. Opening them requires SQLite/LevelDB tooling — genuinely fiddly, but people have gotten their session lists back this way.

Step 4: machine backups — the quiet winner

The most-overlooked path: if Time Machine, File History, or any backup tool covers your machine, restore the Chrome profile folders above from a snapshot dated before the update. This sidesteps every migration question — you’re retrieving the old database as it was. Restore to a separate location (never over your live profile), then apply the developer’s recovery guidance to that copy.

If nothing works

Set a time limit. If steps 1–4 come up empty in an afternoon, the pragmatic answer is that the sessions are gone, and the valuable output of the loss is the system that prevents a repeat:

1. Whatever tool you use next, use its file export on a schedule. Monthly, or before any visible extension update. A JSON file in your backed-up documents is unlosable by extension update.
2. Prefer tools where local export is a first-class feature, not a buried menu item. Our comparison of Session Buddy alternatives evaluates every option on exactly this.
3. Distrust silent migrations forever. It’s the correct paranoia.

Why we’re writing about this

Disclosure: we build browser extensions ourselves — NorthLab Folders, local-first organization for AI chats — and the Session Buddy episode directly shaped our next one. NorthLab Tabs, currently in development, is a side-panel session manager designed around the failure you just experienced: everything local, plus automatic scheduled JSON backups to a folder you choose, so recovery is never archaeology — it’s opening a file. When it ships, this page will link to it; until then, the checklist above is the honest best we can offer.

Frequently asked questions

Can I recover sessions lost in the Session Buddy v4 update?

Sometimes. If the migration failed rather than deleted, your old data may still sit in Session Buddy’s storage inside your Chrome profile folder on disk. Success depends on how long ago it happened and whether the extension’s storage has been overwritten since — try the developer’s recovery guidance first, and stop using the extension until you’ve looked.

Where does Session Buddy store its data?

Locally, inside your Chrome profile directory, in the extension’s storage area (historically Web SQL, now IndexedDB) keyed by the extension’s ID. It was never in the cloud — which is why recovery is even possible, and why a disk backup or Time Machine snapshot from before the update is your best asset.

Did Session Buddy fix the data loss problem?

The developer shipped patches after the v4 backlash, published recovery documentation, and added local backup options. The extension works today. Whether to trust it again is a personal call — the structural lesson is to use any session manager’s export feature on a schedule, so no single migration can take your data.

How do I back up my tab sessions so this never happens again?

Export to a real file on a schedule. Whichever tool you use, look for a JSON or text export, save it monthly (or before any extension update), and keep it somewhere your normal backups cover. If your session manager has no export feature, that’s your sign to switch tools.