It automatically blocks ads and trackers, resulting in improved speed and privacy.
From a review (Cnet):
I’ve been using it for several days and, so far, it can’t be beat. Browsing was immediately and recognizably faster than my previous browser experiences.
Unless something changes I won’t be going back. Highly recommended.
link to review
mmm
they run ads for it on twitter a lot
So it blocks ads but is it blocked from websites?
I have ad blockers on all of my browsers. As a result, 1/2 of the news websites I fall upon block me from seeing their content. And no incognito and private browsing don’t get me access.
I am specifically referring to desktop browsers as Firefox Focus =mobile only - gets me thru on my phone.
At this point I only subscribe to the Washington Post.
I’ve used it for years. Only rarely do I have to toggle off the blocker settings for a particular website.
I must have the bargain version. I tried it (and have it up elsewhere now) and I find it slower than cold snot. It’s now trying and failing to load Google News, Nextdoor, Wikipedia, and Weather Underground. Spinners in tabs are all I see. Oh wait - “This site can’t be reached” is in all windows. My next stop: Uninstall. And I’ll stick with Opera.
I’m a little puzzled by this from the linked cnet review:
This is stated as if it were a good thing, so I must be missing something. I guess it’s opt-in (but in any browser ads are also effectively opt-in; I can opt-in by disabling the ad blocker). I don’t understand the economic model here; who is earning money if I view the Brave ads? It sounds like Brave is replacing ads with its own ads to effectively steal ad revenue from the web site, but surely that’s not really the case, is it?
I use it and it works fast but not perfect, all and all I’d say it’s worth go.
Using it now (MacOS version). My only complaints so far are a) that it advertises itself intrusively to me a bit too damn often; and b) three times now, individual bookmarks disappeared from my Bookmarks menu and I had to re-add them; and c) comparing it to Safari: Safari would let me go to a Bookmarks folder and open all the locations in that folder in set of tabs all in one click. Brave does’t have that so when I want to invoke that I have to go back to Safari.
I’ve had no issues with speed or Brave ads.
By “ads” I mean popups telling me how many ads Brave has saved me from or reminding me that I can earn Brave Points or whatever-the-fuck they’re called, and otherwise promoting the wonderfulness of the Brave browser.
At the bottom of the Brave homepage, there’s an unobtrusive Dashboard Settings icon. There, you can turn off all the Rewards notifications and any other stuff that might annoy you. I never even noticed it until now.
It is so great not to have store videos playing on every webpage.
What is this “Brave homepage” of which you speak?
I know of the Brave Preferences. Can you link me to, or describe click for click how to get to what you’re referring to?
ETA: oh you mean that blank page with the rotating image when it first comes up. I see them now. Thanks!
I am at a loss as to how to get to my self-designated home pages (not the Brave home page) - in most browsers there is a little house icon. Brave doesn’t seem to have this ability.
Am I wrong?
mmm
OK, I found how to add the “Home” icon, but there seems to be no way to customize it.
mmm
I use it on my iPhone because it has better tab handling than Safari, and better bookmark handling than Firefox. Performance seems about in line with the others.
(Firefox has FINALLY enabled folders for organizing bookmarks, so it’s no longer one long list. I cannot understand why it took Mozilla so long to figure that one out.)
I have it on my tablet.
2 weeks ago it stopped blocking ads, on some sites I frequent at least (& saw none of the ‘replacement’ ads mentioned upthread).
BrotherCadfael, my Firefox bookmark list contains bookmark folders and sub-folders that I haven’t even touched in half a decade. I don’t know when they added that feature, but it was long enough ago that it doesn’t make sense to call it “finally”.
I used Brave for a while – never went very deep into the settings and stuff because is did seem to be fast and did fine blocking junk ads. All of a sudden one day the garbage click-bait ads on Reuters from dianomi came back and I switched back to Waterfox.
Haven’t tried very hard but I haven’t found a way get rid of the annoying dianomi ads.
I switched to Brave on my Windows 10 laptop a year ago, because Chrome was beginning to slow down waaaayyyyy too much. It works almost exactly like Chrome, only faster.
The IOS version only gained that recently. The desktop has always had it.