Brave Browser - Ready for Prime Time?

[Rod]

As per my post way back in May (Post #6) this year I had for some years abandoned Safari in favour of Google Chrome initially, then became a little disillusioned with the amount of data they were skimming from me. I had tried a few other browsers up to that time such as Opera, Firefox, Vivaldi Waterfox and Brave in the hope of finding a viable replacement that would run on both macOS and iOS in order to sync bookmarks, history and passwords between devices. In the end I decided on Firefox with the inclusion of Ghostery extension and DuckDuck Go as my default browser.

I retained Vivaldi because it simply does things that other browsers cannot do and if there were an iOS version I would happily swap today.

When Safari 13 was released I decided to give it another try and after a little perseverance and learning I'm coming to the conclusion that it's actually very good. Unfortunately it does not have some extensions which I have come to depend on and its extension library (on the App Store) is almost unusable.
However Safari syncs seamlessly with my portable devices via iCloud and works really well in iOS/iPadOS versions especially with Dark mode.

So, currently I have Firefox for extensions, Vivaldi for it's unique tab handling capabilities and more and Safari as my default for general browsing using AdGuard and DuckDuck Go as my search engine.
Obviously it would be great if one browser could tick all the boxes but so far that has not been the case.

Now I know that Brave has a mobile version and fantastic ad blocking capabilities and has probably come a long way since I tried it last so I'm more than willing to give it another try. Especially now that is has access to Google Extensions but my recollection is that I found the BAT Token system confusing.
So I'll give it another try and report back as I have found it is well worth revisiting browsers as they develop so quickly.

[krs]

Seems almost every browser has some unique capabilities that one has gotten used to.
I keep Waterfox and use that specifically for the "Down Them All" capability which is great when one needs to download all certain file types from a website.
Firefox used to offer that as well but that feature is not available on the newer FF versions.

Firefox has the capability to download any webpage no matter how big as a .png file.
So I keep FF for that

And Brave at this point is my default browser.
I'm not sure exactly what the BAT token system is about either. I just activated it to see what targeted ads I would see - haven't seen any so far but apparently earned a few pennies already.
The only problem with Brave so far is that some websites are complaining about the ad blocking -but that was to be expected.
What gets me - after only using Brave for less than two days, the browser claims it has blocked 4712 ads and trackers.

[Rod]

Well I've been using it for about 20min (on it now) and it claims to have blocked 61 ads and trackers?
What really puzzles me is the image you uploaded. When I tried to Import Bookmarks and Settings I only got one alternative which was Safari. After two failed attempts despite it saying it had successfully imported bookmarks (only) I exported my bookmarks from Firefox as a HTML file and that worked but all I got was Bookmarks nothing else and the panel you showed did not appear. I might uninstall it and try again from the site shown in this thread.

[krs]

I did a bit of a trial of Brave a few months ago, but decided at that time there was no compelling reason to switch from Firefox and redo all the auto-logins, so when I decided now to try Brave permanently, at least for a while, I decided to trash everything "Brave" on my Mac and start with a clean slate.
I ran FAF to get rid of the last "Brace" remnant and then downloaded the Brave Browser from their website.

When I first launched it, I actually expected a pop-up window asking me if I wanted to import bookmarks etc. from my existing browser but that didn't happen.
I had to look under the Brave dropdown options to find the "import from browser" option - that gave the that window I posted with all the options preselected.
FireFox was also preselected as the browser to import these various items from - I checked at the time what other browsers Brave would import from, and there was Chrome and Safari (maybe one more) and also the option to import from a file.
I just imported from Firefox and I must say, that seems to have worked better than expected.
Other than not importing the user/password for 'financial sites', everything so far seems to be there.
And for 'financial sites' Firefox gives me the option to copy the password used on each site, so transferring that to Brave was relatively quick.

As to the number of ads and trackers blocked, I was surprised by the high number as well.
But when you watch the "unrelated" websites that get downloaded (looking at the bottom left of the FF browser window, I have no doubt that the count is correct.

[Rod]

Wel, uninstalling and reinstalling did not change anything for me but as I use a system wide password manager its easy to re enter passwords as required. I also set up a Sync Chain to my iPhone. Fairly simple although unique way of doing it. Required a 24 word randomly generated one time password.

[Rod]

I think Brave will be a big data saver on mobile devices.

[krs]

@Rod - If you think you might keep using Brave, you can throw your 5 cents worth about new features you would like in here:
Desktop Requests - Brave Community

I just glanced through some of the items quickly and already saw the FireFox complete webpage download as one of the requests.
So I'm going to sign up there to add my support to get that feature implemented.

[harryb2448]

Like you Rod Brave will not import boo0kmarks so it is out the window

[krs]

Like you Rod Brave will not import boo0kmarks so it is out the window

You mean from Safari?

I remember years ago I had the export the bookmarks from Safari to an html file and then import that html file to the new browser.
That is an option that should work from any browser to any other browser.

[Rod]

There are some things I like about Brave straight off, such as the default Font and size and colour in Dark Mode (Automatic). The Font is whiter, larger and much more legible in both the search panel and the Favourites tool bar.
Im still getting an understanding of the BAT system which I have enabled. The Brave information pages give a very full explanation and I like the concept of rewarding "Good Ads" and favourite sites. I notice that Mac-Forums is not a "Verified" site so the app is unable to give any tokens to the developers.
Anyway, I'm going to give it a good try and get back to this thread with my findings. I have made it my Default browser for now.

PS I have found a way to open emailed links directly in Brave for iOS/iPadOS if it's stats are true it's saving me a lot of data on 3G.
I have also got the Sync Chain up and working between three of my devices.

[krs]

The Brave browser just passed its first big test with me.

Was notified of an update - 103.8 MB
Decided to go ahead and have it automatically installed.

With FireFox, every time there was a FF update I would lose all the auto log-ins and would have to set them up again - a real waste of time
With Brave, I tested a sample various types of the auto log ins after the update - they all still work.
Big plus for me

[RobNJ]

You mean from Safari?

I remember years ago I had the export the bookmarks from Safari to an html file and then import that html file to the new browser.
That is an option that should work from any browser to any other browser.

Worked like a charm, for me, too.

[TotalSolutions]

Installed Brave today. Used when it was first born / released many years ago with my windows pc. Been using Chrome since it to was released which I like. Install went fairly ok, but stopped (x) when the installer decided to save in Applications/Adobe. Tried again and it went to Applications as it should. May be I was to quick on the mouse on a fast machine ... dunno.

Imported bookmarks ok but not passwords (for this site anyway). Will use for the next few days and see how it goes. Does seem to block as required.

[krs]

Imported bookmarks ok but not passwords (for this site anyway).

For me Brave imported many user names and passwords, but not all.
It seemed initially that passwords of financial sites were not imported, but I later found other sites, non-financial, where I had to type in the password.
But once I went to the site once and selected to remember user name and password, that worked fine.

A lot of things are a bit different from Firefox, so good, some not - as with any browser there is a trade off.
Tracking and ad blocking is a big plus in my mind.

[lori5060]

as suggested by krs...I am posting in this forum rather than from my original post. I wasn't quite sure which person to post reply to as so many others had great info and suggestions...so I just picked first one that resonated with me.

I currently run Sierra and use google search engine. I am planning to upgrade to Mojave soon. i use safari browser but understand there are some big changes in it with Mojave! so am ready to make a change!

over the years, I had heard about so many other browsers and have played with a few but always went back to SAFARI as was so familiar to me. now tried Brave but am having challenges getting bookmarks ...on my MacBook was no problem but cannot find how to do on iPad and iPhone.

I also have google chrome on MacBook also and got bookmarks there no problem. but on iPhone all I got was mobile bookmarks.

I am very interested in using a browser which does collect a lot stuff from me and also ad block protection.... just having a big learning curve with iPhone and iPad.

I have googled on how to do this but anything they suggest does not show up on my devices. I realize all devices are differently set and would be very difficult to get help here. I need to visit a guru to actually guide me.