Photoshop brushes disappeared

I am not afraid to say problem solved!! It was around the time of Covid that I noticed some of my brushes we're not functioning, they were installing even using 'Preset Manager, but I kept on getting a pop-up every time I tried to invoke almost all of my own homemade brushes. Well I've been going through my discs because I put together a brand new computer about three weeks ago and my husband had gifted three discs since 2008 and I installed the one from 2014 my second disc.  I think I have to get to my point really fast I wouldn't doubt words are limited here. I do use an app on Windows 11 I've been using it for years it's called MysticThumbs, Not only does it let you see every image that could be converted to a thumbnail, But it also lets you see your Photoshop brushes (ABR). I just reinstalled my MysticThumbs today and it has a neat little converter in the context menu if you write click on it you can go to thumbnails and you could even choose to convert any any huge picture into an icon or  JPEG or PNG file or bitmap or tif. And the app is not a separate app from Windows it makes it so that you can view all your thumbnails from within Windows Explorer. I went to look at some of my older brushes and they're not very old even some new ones would not open, I thought maybe due to some partition crash which has happened but I don't know what the cause is and I've tried every solution that I read none of which worked. Today, I thought all right click on one of those blank white squares and go to thumbnail scroll down convert convert to JPEG. It invoked something that felt right. at the time I had highlighted three thumbnails that were my most important and as I waited within a minute the three I had created JPEG came up pitch black, but the brushes materialized before my very eyes, and not just the ones that I had converted to JPEG: all of them!! 

so if you have some sort of image converter that will tackle ABR files, DO GIVE IT A TRY!!

it was a pretty lengthy day of discovering brushes that took me hours to create I don't know about patterns I haven't gone through my patterns yet but my brushes was the one thing (I so rely on) & the first thing I noticed that picked up some incompability - I went through all of them today and I think I might've lost a total of four or five brushes, but that's nothing compared to the gigabytes of brushes that I've made [like with the moon, dark clouds at night, my signature,  it's just amazing and everything is back and in the same tree folder in Windows Explorer,.   I might want to change that, maybe  just back it all up on some other SSD.  I'm elated beyond belief,  a really happy camper today and now it's 2025 - back in 2021, a student spilled a drink overtop my tower and fried it.  I had to scrounge and save since 2021 (same year my husband passed away) and it's just about a month that I have everything together and I  finally installed the application, the plug-ins,  the presets, ATNs, ASLs, PAT files, TEX . . . and I'm nowhere near done, GRD &  materials are next, displacement maps the list goes on and on. Just before the water spill I had purchased a copy of Exposure  X7, I highly recommend it, so that's tomorrow's project!  truth be told, it's a passion of mine. Best wishes to you all!!  Maybe a simple and free photo converter, even an online one can dig you out of nonworking brushes. And for about $100 you can get yourself a copy of MysticThumbs, by MysticCoder. One purchase is all you need unless you find yourself with a fried computer and have to buy new parts, then you have to buy another copy and that's something else I had to deal with I'm out of here nice talking with you guys and I just wanted to share my pleasure with you because I remember the pains that I went through the panic I swear I've got about $20,000 infested in time only creating those brushes ❌️❌

Same problem

currently 2025 and this just happened, came here looking for a solution that seems non-existent, I had a lot of brushes that were passed to me by a professor I'm no longer in contact with, tried everything and still can't find my brushes or load them. What now?
Can I download more brushes? yes, but its not the same, they were MY brushes, the one thing I worked well with

WHAT NOW? :c

2022 and the problem is still here 
I had 1000+ brushes. they vanished!

I suffered through this as well, but then the solution (for me at least) was to set PS to start as admin. After that, my brush groups were there every time.

In photoshop elements I just put the abr files i nthe correct location- they never disappear, 18 means this is the location for PSE 2020-- PSE 2021 is 19.

[Possible Solution for some but not the greatest]
This method worked for me. Just to context the my situation for others, I basically logged in (PS 2020) and found all my brushes gone and the default brush folders sitting there. All my personally created custom brushes were pretty much gone.

I tried out this method and searched the file directory (Win10):
C:\Users\(user name)\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop 2020\Adobe Photoshop 2020 Settings
*search bar %appdata% to open hidden appdata folder*

Note that in there is the Brush.psp. If you've been using PS for a long time you'll have older folders of Photoshop, ie Adobe Photoshop 2019 Settings, sitting in the Adobe folder.

I noticed that my PS 2019 brush.psp, a couple months old due to me not updating often, is bigger in filesize and fairly recent. I decided to do a hail mary and copy and paste the old brush.psp in the Adobe Photoshop 2020 Settings. And voila, my brushes were all back.

This is not the greatest solution since this is highly dependent on when that previous brush.psp file was last updated. I was lucky to have my 2019 brush.psp file being only a few months old due to lack of updating but it may be farther back for some. But if you're like me who didn't have abr/backup files of their personal brushes, this may be your last hope. Hope this helps and lesson learned to just back up your brushes.

I just had the exact same problem!!!! terrible to loose all the new brushes I created... even going back into time machine I do not see the brushes in the preset- brushes , going back yesterday when I had all the brushes...this is nuts!!!!

do you mean gone from the Brushes panel, or gone from your Presets folder altogether?

Yes gone from brush panel and presets folder and an other question where do we find our self made brushes so from now on I will back them up , how to do that I am not sure, in fact we need insturction how to save the whole panel with the organsised brushes imported, the orginals and the new ones we created so its easy to recouperate the whole brush panel with all the brushes!!!!!!

Adobe, fix your stuff, this is ridiculous! I need editing programs for my income, I'm one feature away from dropping AE for Davinci resolve completely and I'm one more fudge up from dropping PS for GIMP, that's how bad your software has become for someone that needs reliability. I'm paying a fudgeload for all your apps, even crap I don't need, so make sure we're getting what we're paying for otherwise its just daylight robbery and I'm cancelling all future payments.

Maybe I am special, but my friends don't think so. What is interesting is my current issue with these presets is it wasn't there before. This is new, after the latest upgrade. The upgrade seemed to have cleared up my other issues. I was cruising along just fine until I started to pay attention to what the (bad words here) I was doing!

Good Luck!