Tag: brave

About Brave Browser’s Shred Button on Android

Posted on by Martin Brinkmann

Back in late 2024, Brave introduced a Shred button for its mobile browser on iOS. Now, that same function is finally coming to Android as part of the Brave 1.89 release.

What does Shred do? Shred is a privacy feature that deletes site data that could be used to identify users across visits.

The main idea is to visit a site and, before you leave, hit the shred button to remove potentially identifiable information. It is designed to remove stored data from a single website.

Brave describes it in a new post on its website:

Shred lets you instantly erase any data a site stores on your device. Shred on Android offers the same easy and site-specific data erasure as Shred on iOS. This means you can instantly wipe one website’s stored data without being forcibly logged out of all websites, eliminating the need for complex site-by-site exceptions. This sets Shred apart from similar features in other privacy-focused browsers.

But the manual option is not the only one available. You can also set up shred to automatically delete data on specific websites. Have a site that you visit frequently but want to know as little as possible about you and your activity? The Auto Shred may be the option for you then.

Brave highlights that Shred has other applications, other than protecting against tracking. For instance, it may help with visits to sites that limit access to content artificially for a period, like three free articles per week or month.

Here is how you use the new Shred feature:

  • Open the main menu of the browser and pick Shred site data.
  • Open the tab switcher and tap on the Shred icon.
  • Open the Shields icon and select the Shred option.

To configure auto-shredding, do the following:

  1. Open the Shields icon on the site that you want to configure Auto Shred for.
  2. Select Advanced Controls > Shred site’s data.
  3. Tap on Auto Shred and set it to “site tab closed” or “app close”.

Brave will then shred the site automatically when you close it or when you close the browser.

Last but not least, you can also configure the behavior for all sites.

  1. Open the Settings.
  2. Go to Brave Shields & privacy.
  3. Tap on Auto Shred.

There you get the same two options (tab close or app close).

Brave Origin is a stripped-down version of the browser that you need to buy

Posted on by Martin Brinkmann

When it comes to browsers, most Internet users expect them to be free. Many times, this means that the developer has found other means of generating revenue to keep the business running. This can mean selling default search engine slots, putting sponsored icons on the new tab page, or using user data for all kinds of things.

Paid browsers are rare and most of the time, they do not seem to work overly well. However, the idea of introducing a free and paid version of a browser is something that Internet users know from other apps and services.

So, Brave Software, maker of the Brave Browser, has introduced Brave Origin. This is a “minimalist version” of the browser that cuts all revenue-generating features and can be purchased by making a one-time payment. There is one exception to that: a Linux version of Brave Origin is available for free.

The features that Brave Origin does not support:

  • Leo
  • News
  • Playlist (currently iOS only)
  • Rewards (which also disables browser-based Brave Ads)
  • Speedreader
  • Stats like the daily usage ping, crash logs, and privacy-preserving product analytics (P3A)
  • Talk
  • Tor
  • VPN
  • Wallet (which also disables Web3 domains)
  • Wayback Machine
  • Web Discovery Project

Some of these were discussed controversially in the past, but others including Tor or the Wayback Machine, not so much.

Note: Brave Origin is available as a standalone deskop app or an upgrade. On mobile, the browser is only available as an upgrade. In other words, you can replace Brave with Brave Origin on all supported systems, but install it next to Brave only on desktop systems.

Once you have downloaded and installed the Brave Origin browser, you need to purchase it, unless you opted-in to use the free version on Linux. The price at the time of writing is $60.

Brave says that this is a one-time purchase that is good for up to 10 activations per license across devices.

Closing Words

Launching a paid version is an interesting approach to diversifying revenue. Users can support development of the browser by making this purchase and may also get some of the features removed from it that they do not use or find problematic. At its core, it is still Brave browser, built on Chromium, with a good integrated content blocker.

It probably won’t convince most critics of the browser, or its founder, but it is still an interesting experiment to look at, as it could be an option for other organizations as well.

Brave is getting Container support and the feature has made a big jump recently

Posted on by Martin Brinkmann

Firefox fans have long heralded the browser’s Multi-Account Containers feature as an exclusive that users of Chromium-based browsers did not have. Soon, Brave Brower users may also make use of a Containers feature, ending Firefox’s exclusivity.

Brave has begun rolling out native Container support as an experimental flag in its desktop browser as of April 2026. It allows users of the browser to isolate web sessions better and even get options to open multiple accounts of the same site in a single browser window without using clunky workarounds or third-party extensions.

The Core Concept: Session Isolation

At its core, the Containers feature creates isolated islands within a single browser window. Each container acts as a separate, sandboxed environment. Data, including cookies, local storage, or cached files, can’t be seen or accessed by tabs in another container or by the default container-less environment.

Since data is sandboxed, it is possible to sign-in to the same site in different containers in the same browser window using a single profile, or to open a site with an account and without one at the same time. Furthermore, since data is separate, tracking becomes less effective as the trackers can only see what is going on in a single container and not the entire browser.

Containers works with tab groups and all core features of the browser, including browser extensions.

The feature is available in Brave Nightly only at the time. You need to load brave://flags, search for Enable Containers, and toggle the feature to Enabled to start using it. A restart of the browser is required as usual before it becomes available.

Since this feature is in Nightly, it may have bugs and may not be as polished as the stable version that Brave Software plans to ship in a later version of the browser.

Brave slashes memory use of its ad-blocker by at least 45 megabytes on all platforms

Posted on by Martin Brinkmann

Brave Browser is one of the few major web browsers that supports native content blocking on all supported platforms that is enabled by default. It should not come as a surprise that the browser is on an upwards trajectory when it comes to users and popularity.

While Brave is not without controversy, it is clear that Brave Software has made several meaningful strategic decisions in the past that has benefitted the business immensely.

Quick Tip: do this, if websites do not react anymore in Brave on first load.

Content blocker improvements

Brave announced today that it has improved the memory usage of its internal content blocker significantly. The company claims that it has reduce memory usage by about 75 percent, which equates to a reduction of about 45 megabytes on all supported platforms.

Brave says that users who have enabled additional filters will see an even larger reduction in memory usage going forward.

How it managed to do that? Brave explains:

..we achieved this major memory milestone by iteratively refactoring the adblock-rust engine to use FlatBuffers, a compact and efficient storage format. This architectural transition allowed us to move the roughly 100,000 adblock filters shipped by default from standard, heap-allocated Rust data structures (such as Vecs, HashMaps, and structs) into a specialized, zero-copy binary format.

Brave notes that it has implemented several optimizations in addition). These are:

  • Memory management: Used stack-allocated vectors to reduce memory allocations by 19% and improved building time by ~15%.
  • Matching speed: Improved filter matching performance by 13% by tokenizing common regex patterns.
  • Sharing resources: Resources are shared between instantiations of adblock engines, saving ~2 MB of memory on desktop.
  • Storage efficiency: Optimized internal resource storage memory by 30%.

The main memory reduction and optimizations landed in Brave 1.85 while additional optimizations will be included in the next release of the browser.

It will be interesting to see how users who have enabled additional filters in Brave benefit from the change.

Adding extra filters in Brave

It is quite easy to add more filters to Brave to extend the content blocking functionality.

Note: Each list that Brave supports natively offers a short description of what it does. Fanboy’s Anti-Newsletter list, for instance, blocks newsletter popups on websites.

  1. Select Menu > Settings, or load brave://settings/ directly in the address bar.
  2. Go to Shields > Content filtering.
  3. Click on “show full list” to display all included filter lists.
  4. Check the lists that you want to enable in Brave.

Note that adding lists will increase the memory usage of the content blocker and thus Brave. It is recommended to keep the list as short as possible.

As for recommendations, it depends largely on your Internet browsing and which annoyances you encounter regularly. YouTuber regulars, for instance, could enable filters for mobile distractions and recommendations, if they use Brave on their mobile devices.

There are also language-specific block lists, which are useful if you visit websites regularly in a specific language.

Cookies

Brave: Quick Tip if websites do not react to input when you load them

Posted on by Martin Brinkmann

Brave Browser includes several convenience features, mostly linked to the built-in content blocker. One of the features deals with cookie prompts automatically.

This works well most of the time. Whenever a cookie prompt appears, it is handled immediately by the browser in the most privacy-respecting manner.

Announced in 2022, it has been a feature of the browser ever since and is enabled for all users since mid-2023.

Here is how Brave describes the feature:

One approach (which Brave uses) is to block cookie banners, and to hide and to modify pages to remove any additional annoyance such systems include (such as overlays, preventing scrolling, etc.). Other Web-privacy tools (such as uBlock Origin) can be configured to use this same approach. This approach provides the strongest privacy guarantees: it doesn’t require trusting that the cookie consent systems will respect your choice, and prevents your browser from needing to communicate with consent-tracking systems at all.

Brave blocks cookie banners and deals with any nuisances related to them, including overlays.

However, while that works well most of the time, you may come upon websites that do not seem to work at all. You do not see a cookie prompt, but you can’t interact with the site. No scrolling, clicking on links, copying text. Nothing works.

This may be related to the script that deals with the cookie banners. It is possible that the site changed its code or that Brave does not support the specific cookie prompt the site uses. Brave’s solution relies on EasyList, a community managed list, which means that it works only when sites use one of the identifiers of the list.

Reloading does not resolve the issue, as the site will get stuck again. In fact, the only option that is working is to allow the cookie banner script to display and deal with it manually.

Sidenote: You could dig in the code and find the references to block them manually. May be worth a short, if you visit the site regularly.

The quick solution: Reject everything, deal with the cookie banner manually, and enable the script-blocking of the browser again for the site.

Granted, this is not ideal, as you allow the site to run all of its scripts and such. You could try and allow certain scripts to run only, which is the better approach, if you have the time to adjust this manually, as you will limit scripts this way.

If you are in a hurry though, you may use the method described above to quickly gain access to the site.

Once you have dealt with the cookie banner script, you should be able to use the site in question normally.

YouTube Shorts

Brave: it takes a few clicks to get rid of YouTube Shorts once and for all

Posted on by Martin Brinkmann

The rise of TikTok has saw established sites and apps like YouTube or Instagram scrambling. On YouTube, one response was the introduction and promotion of Shorts, a short video format that resembles TikTok’s own.

YouTube Shorts seem to split the user base. Some like it, others dislike it with a passion. If you fall into the second group, you may like the idea of removing Shorts from YouTube altogether.

If you use Brave Browser, that is handled with just a few clicks. Note that you can also do that in other browsers, which I explain later as well briefly.

Brave Browser's Anti-Shorts video to block YouTube Shorts

So, if you do use Brave Browser, do the following to get rid of YouTube Shorts:

  1. Load brave://settings/shields/filters in the browser’s address bar.
  2. Click on “show full list” underneath the Filter lists section near the top.
  3. Check “YouTube Anti-Shorts”.

Tip: you can also add more, e.g., YouTube Mobile Distractions or YouTube Mobile Recommendations, or any of the other filter lists displayed on the page.

When you reload YouTube now or open the site, you will notice that Shorts are gone. No more Shorts content when you search for videos on YouTube. Shorts is gone from the sidebar, and when you browse recommendations and suggestions, it is also gone.

Now, if you use a different content blocker, like uBlock Origin, then you may add the instructions that Brave uses to it as well. You find Brave’s list here on GitHub. All you need to do is add the instructions as custom filters in uBlock Origin. Any other ad-blocker that supports this filter syntax will work as well.

Now You: What is your take on Shorts on YouTube? Great entertainment and value, or so mundane that you’d rather watch grass grow? Feel free to leave a comment down below.

Brave Browser gets support for injecting scripts into websites

Posted on by Martin Brinkmann

Remember userscripts? These little scripts are a useful alternative to browser extensions. They can be used for lots of things, most often for changing something on websites, like removing elements.

Brave Software announced support for scriplets in the company’s Brave Browser today. These work similarly to userscripts. Users of the browser may add scriptlets to Brave so that they run on selected sites automatically.

The new feature has landed in Brave 1.75, the current stable version of the browser.

Good to known: the process is fiddly right now. You need to enable developer mode, add the scriptlets yourself, and assign websites to these scriplets using custom filters.

Here is how it works in detail:

  1. Load the Content Filters section of the settings. The easiest option is to load this URL: brave://settings/shields/filters
  2. Toggle Developer Mode to turn it on.
  3. Activate the “add new scriplet” button on the same page after enabling developer mode.
  4. Type a name for the scriptlet. You may want to avoid spaces.
  5. Type or paste the code of the script.
  6. Select the Save button.
  7. Now use the following syntax to assign the scriptlet to specific websites: example.com##+js(name-of-your-scriptlet.js)
  8. Select the save changes button.

Notes:

  • Replace example.com with the hostname of the website, e.g., chipp.in.
  • Replace name-of-your-scriptlet.js with the name that you have specified during creation.

Brave will execute the script whenever the matching domain is visited.

You can check out the technical documentation of the feature here.

Userscripts or Scriptlets?

Userscript extensions offer some advantages. They may load userscripts easily from various sources, and they may also update them. They also work in all browsers, which is great if you use multiple browsers.

Brave’s solution supports pasting scripts, but it is still fiddly to link them to specific sites and maintain them.

With that said, it may be interesting to advanced users who prefer to avoid extensions whenever possible.

I cannot really say how Brave’s integrated solution compares to userscripts. It is more powerful, equally powerful, or less?

What is your take on the integration? Good move by Brave?

Brave Shields Down

Brave: if a loaded webpage does not react to your input, try this

Posted on by Martin Brinkmann

When I use Brave Browser, I sometimes encounter websites that do not react at all after load. Scrolling does not work, clicking on links does nothing, and you cannot even copy text.

The site appears crashed, but the rest of the browser works fine.

Here is one reason for the issue: Brave reacts to cookie and privacy prompts automatically. This works well most of the time, but sometimes, it does not.

Sites stop responding in those cases. You can reload them, but the issue persists. There is a solution though.

  1. Click on the Shield-icon in Brave’s address bar.
  2. Toggle the Shields functionality to Off. Brave reloads the webpage.
  3. You should get a privacy prompt now.
  4. Select Reject all or whichever option you want.
  5. Re-enable Shields. The site reloads.

The webpage works normally from that moment on. It is not locked anymore and you may interact with the site again.

I do not experience the behavior often. Maybe once every 250 or so sites I open and visit.

What about you? Did you notice the odd behavior? Feel free to leave a comment down below.

Brave

Brave Browser may support some Manifest V2 extensions even after Google’s shutdown

Posted on by Martin Brinkmann

There has been a lot of talk about Google replacing the extensions system of the Chromium web browser with an updated version. Chromium is the source for many browsers, including Google Chrome, Brave Browser, Opera, Microsoft Edge, and many more.

While open source, it is Google that controls Chromium to a large degree.

Brave Software, maker of the Brave Browser, has now announced its stance on existing extensions support and the upcoming changes.

Here are the highlights:

  • Classic extensions continue to work until at least June 2025. Brave activated an Enterprise-feature to extend support.
  • Brave Software plans to support a small number of extensions beyond June 2025: AdGuard, NoScript, uBlock Origin, and uMatrix
  • Brave Shields is unaffected.

Brave Software’s plan

Brave Software Manifest V2 Extensions page

All classic extensions will continue to work in Brave Browser until at least June 2025. Brave Software uses an official setting in Chromium to extend support.

Google plans to end support this year, but allows Enterprise customers to extend support by a year.

Come June 2025, Brave Software hopes that it can continue to offer support for four major content blocking extensions.

  • AdGuard
  • NoScript
  • uBlock Origin
  • uMatrix

This requires modification of Chromium code and the developers of the extensions according to Brave Software.

The company notes:

While Brave has no extension store, we have a robust process for customizing (or “patching”) atop the open-source Chromium engine. This will allow us to offer limited MV2 support even after it’s fully removed from the upstream Chromium codebase.

Extensions that become “stale or obsolete” may be removed. One example is the creation of a Manifest V3 extension that offers the same or similar functionality.

Brave users may control the four mentioned extensions, and any that may be added along the way, on the new Extensions page in the Settings.

Just load brave://settings/extensions/v2 to access it. Here users may enable or disable support for the Manifest V2 extensions. Note that this happens automatically, if one of the extensions gets installed in the web browser.

Closing Words

Manifest V2 extensions will eventually go away. While it is commendable that Brave Software plans to extend support for some beyond June 2025, it is clear that this is only a temporary measure.

Content blocking remains possible, even in Chromium-based browsers. The adblockers may not be as effective or feature-rich anymore, but it is likely that most blocking operations continue as before for the majority of users.

Those who want full control may switch to Firefox, as the Mozilla browser will continue to support Manifest V2 next to Manifest V3.

What about you? Do you use a Chromium-based browser and Manifest V2 extensions currently? What will you do when support ends?

Brave signing you out all the time? Here is a fix for that

Posted on by Martin Brinkmann

For several months, I have noticed a rather strange behavior of Brave Browser. Whenever I use it to write articles on WordPress sites, it is logging me out on start or shortly thereafter.

This happens very frequently to the point that it is quite annoying. The following guide may help you resolve the issue. It fixes the issue on my end.

The basics: checking settings

Brave Delete Cookies and site data on exit setting

Brave supports several features that may interfere with accounts you are signed in.

Here is what you want to check first:

  • Click on the Shield icon, expand Advanced Controls, and check that “Forget me when I close that site” is not checked.
  • In the same menu, check that “Block all cookies” is not selected.
  • Load brave://settings/clearBrowserData and verify that “cookies and other site data” is not cleared on exit.
Brave Shields

If these options are set correctly, which they were on my end, then you may proceed to the next section.

Finding the actual culprit

Brave Secure DNS setting

Making a change to the following option resolved the issue on my end. There is a bonus tip at the end, if making the change does not work for you.

  1. Open the Privacy and Security settings page by loading this URL in the address bar: brave://settings/security
  2. Check whether “Use secure DNS is activated”.
    • If it is, disable the feature.

Use Brave as you would normally. If you do not encounter the issue anymore after several days of usage, you have likely fixed it.

I do not know if the problem is caused by specific Secure DNS providers, or if it does not matter which provider you select. Disabling Secure DNS in Brave fixed the issue on my end.

Bonus tip: you may also want to consider disabling Brave’s fingerprinting protection on affected sites, just to see if it resolves the issue. I read user reports on the Internet that claimed that disabling it helped them.

What about you? Have you run into similar problems in the past?