I upgraded to Catalina last week or so and in the course of getting things working one of the things I learned is that security features have changed. Brave now needs permissions in a few places I don’t think it used to. Sometimes the windows prompting for those permissions (from the OS) don’t rise above the active application window, so I’d suggest opening System Preferences --> Security & Privacy --> Privacy before opening Brave and see if Brave has unchecked entires in Camera, Microphone, and Accessibility.
At least for Accessibility, you should be able to unlock the padlock bottom left, click the + button under the list of apps, and select Brave in the resulting dialog window. For the camera and microphone, I don’t know; @Mattches, do you know a way to get Brave camera and mic permissions without it running and going to a site that asks for permission so Brave uses brave://settings/content/camera and brave://settings/content/microphone? Is there a point to trying it?
Here’s a little video of doing the Accessibility setting:
@Donaldleebailey,
The issue you’re describing sound more like a crash/error rather than the lack of a certain permission being granted. You say the browser will freeze when trying to download a file – is this the only time (or most reliable time) at which the browser freezes in this way?
I agree. This happens when downloading a file from the Brave browser. The browser simply freezes, requiring a Force Quit. No error report is auto-sent when the browser opens again.
The browser only seems to freeze during the download process. Having said that, not every download will lock the browser. I haven’t seen a specific pattern when download process causes the browser to freeze.
@Donaldleebailey,
Can you give me two an example sites/files that I can test on my end? Ideally, one download that you can confirm will freeze the browser, and the other should be one where you can confirm won’t freeze the browser.
So that you know, I continue to have Brave freeze randomly. However, there isn’t a pattern that I have been able to recognize yet.
For example; I open the browser and find a file that I want to do a screen capture or download. Selecting the ‘save as’ function navigates to the desired location. After clicking ‘Save as’ and naming the file, the browser freezes. No further interaction is possible. Next step requires ‘Force Quit’ to release/restart the browser.
However, it’s not resetting to a fresh restart – meaning that typically a fresh restart also loads the configuration of ‘open at startup’ pages for the browser. It simply reopens the browser. Closing the browser down again will reopen properly with the default pages.
Going back to the page and file that caused the browser to freeze always works properly for the second time, saving the file. The browser doesn’t seem to have a problem with subsequent downloads either.
There does not seem to be a consistency in the type of file or location that I’m saving the file. It just seems to be completely random. It’s frustrating.
Again, thanks for your thoughts if you want to continue chasing the situation.
I’m starting to see some consistency: Brave seems to freeze with the first time I download any type of file on any URL. Force Quit is the only way to recover the browser, but restarting it still does not bring up the default pages until the browser is quit again.
The consistency is with the first download following the first time the browser is launched.
