Brave is a fork of Google's Chromium that provides a privacy-respecting alternative to the commercial Google Chrome browser. I use it where LibreWolf won't work at all or without unreasonable effort, like when I need WebUSB or a site's code spectacularly fails to conform to web professional best practices.
It goes without saying that what follows reflects my experience on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS desktop at a moment in time. Like many other software apps, the availability and configuration of some features change over time: so YMMV!
Brave works on all platforms. Since I'm currently on Ubuntu desktop, I follow the installation instructions for that distribution.
The defaults for Brave are pretty reasonable, but here are the changes I make in Settings:
- Get Started > On startup > Open a specific pager or set of pages: your homepage
- Appearance > Show home button: Enabled
- Appearance > Show home button > Enter custom web address: your homepage
- Privacy and Security > Tor windows: Disable all
- Privacy and Security > Data collection > Automatically send daily usage ping to Brave: Disable
- Autofill and passwords > Password Manager > Settings: Disable all
- Autofill and passwords > Payment methods: Disable all
- Addresses and more > Save and fill addresses: Disable
- System > System > Use graphics acceleration when available: Disable [1]
At least as of the latest version available when I write this, most of the annoyances I used to spend time disabling, like Brave Rewards, are turned off by default. That's a welcome change.
I really appreciate the "Reset settings" function to get me back to the shipping defaults.
- Bitwarden (password manager, bitwarden.com)
- Dark Reader (darkreader.org)
[1] Chromium's handling of graphics acceleration on Linux has been uneven for a long time, so I disable it to avoid unnecessary stress.