Symptoms

You set a custom start page or search engine, and later find it's back to the default — sometimes with a one-time notice about "Browser Setting Protection."

This is very likely intentional

Vodou signs these three settings and verifies them on every launch specifically to stop adware or a bad installer from silently hijacking them. If the saved file doesn't match its signature — including from a hand-edit outside Vodou's own Settings dialog — Vodou restores your last genuinely-authorized value (or the private defaults, if it has none at all) and tells you. See Browser Setting Protection.

What to do

  1. Re-set the value through ☰ → Settings → Start page & search — always use this dialog, never edit the settings file directly.
  2. Check ☰ → Settings → Privacy & security → Browser Setting Protection… for a log of exactly what was blocked and when.
  3. If you're seeing this repeatedly and you're confident you're the only one changing these settings, it's worth checking your machine for other software modifying files under ~/.vodou/.