Brave keeps crashing on Windows 11 from time to time

Description of the issue:

When I’m doing normal tasks, such as watching YouTube, and browsing Reddit, Brave tends to crash and completely shuts down without any error message. Sometimes I do receive the “Aw Snap! Something went wrong” message if the current active tab crashes, but in most severe cases, the browser application completely shuts down. When I re-open the browser, I’m greeted with the “Brave did not close properly, reload tabs” (which is a temporary fix), but most of the time after about 5 or 10 min, I get tab crashes and application crashes.

This is extremely frustrating and I’ve basically tried every single troubleshoot I read up online, such as:

  • Completely uninstall Brave and re-install
  • Clear cache and cookies
  • Turned off hardware acceleration
  • Turned on memory saver
  • Updated all drivers on my PC
  • Updated Bios
  • Clean installed Windows 11

I have a high-end PC which shouldn’t have any memory problems, and Brave is the only application where the problem still persists and I’m at a loss.

Steps to Reproduce (add as many as necessary): 1. 2. 3.

  1. Open Youtube/Reddit, browse for a couple of minutes before tab/app crashes.

Actual Result (gifs and screenshots are welcome!):

Crash after normal use.

Expected result:

Stable browsing experience with minimal to no crashes.

Reproduces how often:

Every 5-10 min or so.

Operating System and Brave Version(See the About Brave page in the main menu):

PC Specs:

  • Operating System: Windows 11 Home
  • CPU: Intel Core i9 13900K 3.0GHz (5.8GHz Turbo Boost Max) 8 P-Core, 16 E-Core, 32-Thread
  • GPU: MSI GeForce RTX 4090 Gaming Trio
  • Motherboard: MSI Z790 Edge
  • RAM: Kingston Fury RGB 32GB DDR5 5600 MHz (2x16GB)
  • SSD: 2TB NVMe SSD
  • CPU Cooler: EKWB 360MM Liquid Cooler
  • PSU: Thermaltake 1200W ATX 3.0 PSU

Brave Version:

Release Notes v1.76.74 (Mar 11, 2025)

Additional Information:

N/A

1 Like

I’m having the same issue for a few weeks now. Only on one of my machines. There’s no specific thing that causes it that I can figure out. I have noticed that my bitwarden extension keeps becoming corrupted and I have to repair it. Not sure how or if those correlate, but they started happening almost at the same time.

Interesting… I have the bitwarden extension installed as well…

Have you tried to disable it and browse afterwards?

Do either of you see any recent crash logs available at brave://crashes

Yes, I can provide the crash reports once I get home later tonight in case you need it.

1 Like

Not yet. I’ve just been repairing it and using it until it happens again. I wonder if the update of bitwarden extension triggered something in some machines.

1 Like

Getting the crash report IDs is the first and best step to figuring out what’s going on under the hood. @BRANDENDEUCE if you can launch the browser and go to brave://crashes and share any crash report IDs with us here, we can take a closer look.

These are the 2 most recent on the list. I sent about 10 total.

Crash from Tuesday, March 11, 2025 at 3:15:14 PM

Status: | Upload requested by user |

  • | - |
    Local Crash Context: | 902387dd-b5c7-4623-8dd4-4b5dfb5fbb6b |

Crash from Tuesday, March 11, 2025 at 2:21:39 PM

@BRANDENDEUCE once the crash report actually sends (you can send it directly on the crashes page), the crash report ID should end in 0s – that will be the ID that we need.

Hi there, here is the latest one that just happened not too long ago…

Crash from Wednesday, March 12, 2025 at 12:45:51 AM

Status: Not uploaded
Local Crash Context: 9afcd320-16bb-4001-9dc9-699484161d09

Could you upload it, then provide the ID that is given? It should end in all 0’s

Crash from Tuesday, March 11, 2025 at 3:15:14 PM

Status: | Uploaded |

  • | - |
    Uploaded Crash Report ID: | a6331b00-41aa-7e0d-0000-000000000000 |
    Upload Time: | Tuesday, March 11, 2025 at 4:05:59 PM |

Crash from Tuesday, March 11, 2025 at 2:21:39 PM

@BRANDENDEUCE Can you tell me if you have any extensions installed in the browser at this time? Additionally, do you see the crash if you launch the browser with a fresh profile? You can do this quickly by editing the Target path of the Brave Browser shortcut on your desktop:

  1. Right-click on the desktop shortcut and select Properties
  2. In the Target path, at the end (after the quotes), enter the following string:
--user-data-dir="C:\Users\[your user name]\Downloads"
  1. Ensure that when you do this, you put a space between the command above and the string already in the target path. Also note that you can choose any directory – I just used Downloads as an example.

Once done, when you open the browser using this shortcut, it will launch the browser in a fresh profile. Please let me know if the browser still exhibits the crash.