Is Chrome for iOS deleting your saved passwords? Here’s what’s up

Over the past week, at least since the latest Chrome for iOS update came out on August 22nd (v 21.0.1180.77), we’ve seen numerous complaints from iPhone and iPad users that their saved passwords have suddenly disappeared. Since then a duplicable pattern has been found and reported as a bug to Google.

Here’s what you need to avoid doing if you don’t want your passwords deleted for the time being:

Steps to reproduce:

1. Save password via Google Sync on desktop; ensure it appears on iOS device
2. Open a new Incognito tab on iOS device
3. Close Incognito tab on iOS device

Expected result: Saved passwords are retained
Actual result: All saved passwords are cleared across all synced devices

According to the bug report, users can prevent losing their passwords by disconnecting Chrome iOS from Sync. Alternatively, users can also turn off password syncing in options (disable sync all; disable sync passwords). Chromium dev Stuart Morgan is apparently tracking this issue right now.

So if this is you:

For the last 2 days all my “most visited” sites and all my passwords saved in chrome are gone. This is a huge pain in the butt because I didn’t save my passwords anywhere else. Anyone else have this issue? Fixes?

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You know what to do.

We’ve reached out to Google and a representative has given the following response:

“We have received reports that using Incognito* mode in Chrome for iOS has resulted in some loss of data (most notably saved passwords). Users can expect full data recovery and restoration across all devices.  We will have password data restored for all users within a few hours.  We know how important these services are to our users and apologize for any inconvenience.”