Brave Keeps Adding Itself To Login Items [Mac]

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21

I’ve just reconfirmed that this is not something that we are doing (adding ourselves to login items).

Can either/both of you try installing the Beta version and test to see if Beta also ads itself to the login items in the same way?

1 Like
22

Just installed Beta, it did not add itself to Login Items. However, it’s also not configured the same as normal Brave, as I spent a long time tweaking it over the past few years.
I just installed it, opened it, went to a few sites, and closed it. Shut Mac down. Turned Mac on. Brave auto opened, Beta did not.

23

@Slimothy,
This makes me suspect that specific extensions installed perhaps maybe be interfering here —do you have any installed at this time?

1 Like
24

Yes-

uBlock Origin -Enabled
Cookie AutoDelete - Enabled
ClearURLs - Enabled
YouTube Enhancer - Enabled
1Password - Enabled
BehindTheOverlay - Disabled
Coinbase Wallet - Disabled
Google Translate - Disabled
MetaMask - Disabled
VidIQ Vision - Enabled

Many of these I’ve had for years but I don’t really know how they would be able to interfere with Brave’s actual code to enable it to add itself to Login Items.

25

Can you please try disabling them and test to see if this resolves the issue?

2 Likes
26

Holy ****. It was an extension. I finally had some time to go through each one, one by one, and of course it was the absolute last extension I had left to try. It was the VidIQ Vision for YouTube extension.

So, the next step is to figure out how and why an extension has access to add items to a system preference of a Mac. Is there some direct way I/we can get in contact with their dev team to discuss?

@hlucas13 do you happen to have the VidIQ extension? Or I guess there could be multiple extensions out there that somehow have this invasive access. Definitely not good!

EDIT: I just re-enabled VidIQ after having it disabled for about an hour. It is no longer causing the issue even when enabled. I have no idea why. This is the strangest bug I think I’ve ever experienced with such a large public piece of software. But I now do not have the issue, and VidIQ is back.

My recommendation is to find the bad extension, disable it. Close Brave for 5 mins. Then re open brave (keep the bad extension off) for 1 hour. Then try re enabling and see if it fixes. Somehow, this worked for me. I do not know if I restarted my Mac in the last hour, I may have but I don’t think I did. Feel free to do that too though.

3 Likes
27

Hey! Check if you have the VidIQ extension, that was causing it for me! I disabled it and the issue went away. PHEW.

28

Glad you found out it’s a problem with extensions. I don’t have VidIQ installed, but I’ll try to check one by one as soon as I have some time. I currently have:

  • Bitwarden
  • ColorZilla
  • Google Translate
  • Grammarly
  • Grepper
  • JSON Viewer
  • Loom
  • Scrnli
  • Speedtest
  • Wappalyzer
  • daily.dev
  • Enhanced GitHub
  • Material DevTools Theme
29

EDIT: I just re-enabled VidIQ after having it disabled for about an hour. It is no longer causing the issue even when enabled. I have no idea why. This is the strangest bug I think I’ve ever experienced with such a large public piece of software. But I now do not have the issue, and VidIQ is back.

My recommendation is to find the bad extension, disable it. Close Brave for 5 mins. Then re open brave (keep the bad extension off) for 1 hour. Then try re enabling and see if it fixes. Somehow, this worked for me. I do not know if I restarted my Mac in the last hour, I may have but I don’t think I did. Feel free to do that too though.

Back to what I was saying:

Gotcha, yep there’s actually a quick way to check.

  1. Turn them all off (disabled)
  2. Go to Login Items, delete Brave.
  3. Turn them on 1 by 1 and once you find the bad one, it will immediately add to Login Items and you’ll see it.

If you’re on macOS Ventura Dev Beta, there’s a new feature where it gives you a notification when a program adds to Login Items. Otherwise you’ll just have to check each time you enable an extension in Login Items to see which adds it.

1 Like
30

Thanks for explaining the way to identify which extension changes the login items. I did it one by one and in my case was also the last one I tried, Wappalyzer. I haven’t used it for a while, so I opted to remove it permanently.

31

Thanks for all the information guys and I’m glad that it ended up being a simple fix like removing the extension. You can find the developers of these extensions on the Chrome store website — at minimum it is worth reporting to them.

33

I found this after googling as I was having the same problem. After explicitly removing Brave from startup items it adds itself back every time I launch Brave.

How is it possible for a browser extension to modify my startup items? Doesn’t that require administrative privileges?!

1 Like
34

It’s pretty ridiculous and seems really bad. I’m not sure how truly risky it is from a security perspective but the optics of it look bad.

I’m actually a bit surprised this hasn’t been fixed. It’s been around for years now based on what I’ve read.

I’m glad I have a fix but the fact that an extension can somehow manipulate Login Items on a Mac makes me reconsider brave on its own.

Hoping a dev can chime in and fix it permanently. Or explain why a third party extension can change system-wide settings on a Mac.

1 Like
35

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