I thought Brave was based on Chromium as opposed to Google Chrome? I may not fully understand the differences between the open source Chromium project and Google’s official Chrome browser but I know there are at least a few significant ones.
The uncertainty was created thanks to this Brave Help Center page discussing ‘Changes to macOS desktop browser requirements’.
The Brave Help Center article provides the following information with a link to Google Chrome Help:
“These changes are made in parallel with new Chromium system requirements.”
That link to a Google Chrome Help answer doesn’t even adequately address what the Chromium system requirements are necessitating the Brave changes unless Brave is built upon Google Chrome so as goes Google Chrome goes Brave Browser? If that is the case then I guess I understand why Brave Support just punted to Google’s non-explanation.
Built on Chromium. I believe that it’s simply because the Chromium system requirements are the same as Chrome itself. Looking now, I actually don’t see “Chromium” (specifically) for any system requirements other than what’s required to develop/build Chromium from source.
The Chromium requirements are the same as the Google Chrome requirements. Any browser leveraging the Chromium browser engine will have to meet these requirements.
It also says “Chromium” (specifically) about 10 times on that same page and Chrome itself is not open source, it can not be “built on”.
@LudicrousSpeedGo I saw Mattches’ response and thought I’d add a bit more context. A lot of modern browsers, including Chrome, Brave, Edge, and Vivaldi, are built on Chromium. This is an open-source project that uses the Blink engine. Google funds most of Chromium’s development, but it is not the same as Google Chrome.
Chromium is the base layer. Each browser that uses it adds or removes features to meet its own goals. Brave, for example, removes many Google services and adds privacy-focused tools. Even with those changes, it still runs on the same underlying Chromium code.
When Chromium updates its system requirements, those changes affect all browsers built on it. That is probably why Brave linked to a Chrome Help page. The requirements come from the same place, even if the final browsers are different in how they operate or present themselves.
Also, about those system requirements, the article does not really focus on hardware specs like RAM or CPU. It is mostly about the minimum supported version of the operating system. When an OS reaches end of life and no longer gets updates, it becomes unsafe to support it. Browsers depend on system-level security features and libraries, and if the OS is no longer patched, the browser could be left vulnerable in ways that cannot be fixed from the browser side. That is why browser developers eventually stop supporting old versions of Windows, macOS, or Linux once those versions are no longer maintained.
It’s the version of OS that they support. Hence the portion below:
Thanks guys. That all jives with what I thought I knew.
Whoever wrote the official Brave Help page that I referred to might consider adding some of this context instead of just linking as was done with no explanation. The link simply does not stand on its own but with just a sentence or two it might at least make sense. I still struggle to see how that link fits with the context of the article though.
The article is explaining that this is the last version of Brave supported on those specific OS versions. As it said, The last supported version for users on macOS 10.15 Catalina is…
Brave could have stopped there, but they went a step further to clarify that it’s because Chromium no longer supports it. That means Brave would either need to invest a lot of extra effort to keep supporting it or just follow Chromium’s lead.
The issue with Chromium is that it doesn’t really have a user-friendly help center to reference. The Chromium Project is mostly geared toward developers, not end users.
Sure, they could have linked to https://issues.chromium.org/issues/40254578 but would that really make things clearer?
