Brave takes up to over a minute to launch, slowly escalating to 2-3 minutes

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Description of the issue:
Greetings, this is my first post here, so, I hope I do this right.
I’d like to report that my Brave browser is starting to take over a minute (1m 20s to be exact) to launch again. I say again because I reinstalled my Fedora OS to fix bugs no more than a week ago, I think Sunday 22 June 2025, and among them Brave’s slow launch got fixed, it’d take at most 10 seconds to launch vs 3 minutes in my old Fedora instance.

I noticed that, after some updates given by the Software app of Fedora were installed this week, the launch time jumped from 10 seconds to 1m 20s. I tested some things, rebooting after each single one: disabling and enabling GPU Acceleration, clearing browsing history and cache (800mb), disabling all my Startup Apps (which was only one, MEGA Sync), and testing CPU’s balanced/performance modes.

Nothing I have found in the forums or other websites online with this similar issue has worked either, this is why I am here.

Brave Version(about:brave):
Brave 1.80.113 (Official Build) (64-bit)
Chromium: 138.0.7204.49

Additional Information:

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image1071×578 74.8 KB

I have also noticed that, when my Fedora was fresh, this extension I have (Prolific Assistant) that prompts me to login with an account, didn’t require me to go to its Settings and set the “Alert Sound” option for Desktop Notifications anymore unlike in my old Fedora instance, where, every time I rebooted my laptop and opened Brave, it’d set that option back to “None” for no reason. However, recently, like 2 days ago, along with the slow launch, that bug returned too, and also, Prolific Assistant logs me out a lot, something that wouldn’t happen at all in the old Fedora. This logging-out bug has been happening since the first day with my new Fedora, but I didn’t mind it as much as this.

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@Caferino

What happens when you launch Brave Browser, and how to try and start from the Linux OS command line:

BB looks for the status of things:

  • latest state of sync
  • latest state of component updates
  • latest state of BB application file’s updating
  • latest state of extensions that are part of BB installation

In general, things that can go wrong:

  • BB cannot make a reliable, obstruction-free connection to some source of info.
  • BB cannot make that connection at a rate of success that is satisfactory (“times out”).
  • Re that connection, BB keeps trying (do looping) and may eventually succeed, or not.
  • BB cannot correctly process some setting; could be corrupted or missing info.
  • BB files, folders ← one or more are corrupted, damaged, missing.
  • Some ranking thing used by BB - a secure certificate, key, or passphrase controlled by the Operating System and/or computer user, is suddenly a roadblock instead of a help.
  • Some add-on, extension, or plug-in installed by the user, is a roadblock, somehow.
    • An anti-virus and/or Internet Security -type application, is a roadblock, somehow.

There are multiple settings files for BB. Take the Preferences file, for example:

/BraveSoftware/Brave-Browser/ ← somewhere in a sub-folder of that Brave-Browser folder, is the initial BB user’s profile ← contained in a folder named Default. The Preferences file is with that Default folder.

Not all of the BB Settings that you control, are within that Preferences file. If, in a BB New Window, you go to brave://prefs-internals/ you will see a long list of BB Settings/Preferences. Some of the Settings/Preferences that you see there . . . ARE NOT within the Preferences file.

Some of the Settings/Preferences are within the Local State file that is somewhere within the Brave-Browser folder and at the same level as the Default folder. You can see the Local State info in a BB New Window at brave://local-state/.

Meanwhile, there are additional Settings/Preferences - depending upon your Operating System. For example, some Settings/Preferences are within the Windows OS Registry. Some Settings/Preferences are among .plist files of the MacOS installation: com.brave.Browser.plist for example.

You can help Brave Support, to help you, by tracking down the exact paths:

  • Location of the Brave Browser executable
  • Location of the BB user profile that you most often use

In a Brave Browser New Window, go to brave://version and scroll down there, a little bit, to find that info . . . IF you can get BB running. Otherwise, you need to search around in the folder structure of your computer.

Usually, in a Linux OS command line, you can start Brave Browser with one of the following commands:

brave -n --args --incognito --no-experiments --disable-extensions --disable-gpu --enable-leak-detection --crash-on-failure 2> $HOME/Desktop/brave_console_out.txt

or

brave-browser -n --args --incognito --no-experiments --disable-extensions --disable-gpu --enable-leak-detection --crash-on-failure 2> $HOME/Desktop/brave_console_out.txt

For that command string, the switches are intended to:

  • Start up Brave Browser, showing a New Private Window [--incognito]
  • Disable all experiments at brave://flags [--no-experiments]
  • Disable extensions [--disable-extensions]
  • Disable hardware (GPU) ie Graphic Acceleration [--disable-gpu]
  • Enable leak detection and if that failure occurs, then crash the browser [--enable-leak-detection --crash-on-failure are a combo]
  • Produce error/log output to a file named ‘brave_console_out.txt’ on the MacOS Desktop