A shout out for the Brave browser

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dafman

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#243639 22-Dec-2018 10:29

I recently decided to move away from Chrome browser as I wanted to de-Google some of my life, plus improve privacy around trackers and intrusive ads.

I settled on Brave browser as it provided both Windows and Android offerings.

Unlike other competing browsers, the Android Brave browser has a UI and feel that completely mirrors Chrome for Android, so, for me, was the perfect replacement as I liked the Chrome experience.

The Windows Brave browser wasn't quite up to the Chrome experience - in particular, start up time was slow and it didn't support Chrome extensions. Well that just changed, yesterday Brave introduced an all new Windows browser that starts up instantly and now supports Chrome extensions. If fact, the new UI is pretty much identical to Chrome.

So, in short, I'd highly recommend Brave if you are interested in having a 'rest' from Google watching your every move. Another advantage with Brave is that you have the option of directly supporting web content or supported advertising. I have yet to look into this, but will do.

Finally, in the short few months since I have been using Brave, it informs me that, to date, it has blocked over 112,000 ads and 37,000 trackers.

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#2149235 22-Dec-2018 11:51

Hmmm....

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brave_(web_browser):

"In a future version of the browser, the company intends to adopt a pay-to-surf business model"

No Thanks.

(Not saying the browser isn't good now; but that prospect sounds alarming to me!)

KiwiSurfer

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#2149279 22-Dec-2018 12:57

Firefox has improved enormously in recent years. So it is well worth checking out Firefox if you haven't tried it for a while. Like OP I am moving away from Google. Switched to Firefox about a year or two back and loving it. Had already been using Safari for my mobile browsing for some time. I now only use Chrome for testing (I do the occasional web development) as well as for the very few buggy websites that don't comply with the standards (which I usually just don't bother visiting anyway).

freitasm

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#2149309 22-Dec-2018 14:41

jamesrt:

Hmmm....

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brave_(web_browser):

"In a future version of the browser, the company intends to adopt a pay-to-surf business model"

No Thanks.

(Not saying the browser isn't good now; but that prospect sounds alarming to me!)

This must be an old entry in the Wikipedia page. Brave does not charge to surf - it offers a feature called "Brave Rewards". Basically you load some balance on your account every month and publishers receive a share of that balance based on the time/attention you give to each different site.

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dfnt

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#2149319 22-Dec-2018 15:27

I was keen to switch away from chrome, but until you can remove/hide these icons I'll stick with chrome:

Firefox isn't an option because it's a battery killer on Mac's and will be for quite some time till they rework the UI

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#2149340 22-Dec-2018 16:10

I like the fact that chrome saves all my passwords as I am yet to understand how password apps work

Behodar

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#2149344 22-Dec-2018 16:14

I've been using Brave for the past few months at work (I prefer Firefox but a buggy firewall update has broken it). It seems to be the "best of a bad bunch"; in particular I get frustrated with the UI and its habit of forgetting its history after about a week.

There also seem to be issues with updates. I was prompted for an update the other day, with the change log saying something like "makes it easier to migrate from other browsers". My data is already migrated so I clicked No. 30 seconds later the browser restarted and updated itself.

The browser market seems to be pretty poor at the moment :(

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gzt

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#2149357 22-Dec-2018 16:47

You realise it's based on the chrome engine anyway? Ie; still dependent on Google and tied to it for technology etc. There are other choices if that's not what you want.

dafman

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#2149376 22-Dec-2018 17:15

Behodar:

I've been using Brave for the past few months at work (I prefer Firefox but a buggy firewall update has broken it). It seems to be the "best of a bad bunch"; in particular I get frustrated with the UI and its habit of forgetting its history after about a week.

There also seem to be issues with updates. I was prompted for an update the other day, with the change log saying something like "makes it easier to migrate from other browsers". My data is already migrated so I clicked No. 30 seconds later the browser restarted and updated itself.

The browser market seems to be pretty poor at the moment :(

The latest Brave version is not an update, it's an entirely new browser, and it's pretty good.

dafman

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#2149377 22-Dec-2018 17:17

gzt: You realise it's based on the chrome engine anyway? Ie; still dependent on Google and tied to it for technology etc. There are other choices if that's not what you want.

It's based on Google tech, but Google can't watch it.

freitasm

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#2149378 22-Dec-2018 17:19

gzt: You realise it's based on the chrome engine anyway? Ie; still dependent on Google and tied to it for technology etc. There are other choices if that's not what you want.

It's based on the Chromium engine. It actually doesn't log you into Google accounts like Google Chrome does.

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#2149379 22-Dec-2018 17:27

On Android I find Brave quite responsive at the cost of heavy RAM usage and poor battery life. I don't use it as a primary browser on any system but keep it around and appreciate it being part of the general milieu of chromium derivatives, though I find it a shame how dominant this rendering engine is getting.

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gzt

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#2149381 22-Dec-2018 17:29

chrome://flags/#account-consistency switch changes that behavior.

alternatively the ungoogled-chromium project maybe.

although, I would have thought the Chromium open source browser itself (avail for Windows etc) would not have that multiple service sign in maybe it does.

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#2150261 24-Dec-2018 22:33

A vote here for Opera. For me it's the Rolls Royce of mobile browsers, the text reflow function is outstanding. You can sync bookmarks, quick dials, logins and passwords between devices. The desktop version has a very useful tool for capturing screen shots.

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#2150275 24-Dec-2018 23:27

Vivaldi FTW

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#2150459 25-Dec-2018 13:32

Tried the Brave browser a while back, a few things were not working right but with the new version it seems all good. Will use this as my primary browser until further notice.

First impressions - nice and fast tick, Last Pass integration tick, bookmark management better tick, ad blocking tick, tracker blocking tick......................

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