Can't receive future updates

I received notice:
" Brave is up to date
To get future Brave updates, you’ll need macOS 10.15 or later. This computer is using macOS 10.13. Learn more
Version 1.52.117 Chromium: 114.0.5735.90 (Official Build) (x86_64)
"
I have Brave firewall+VPN
I realize my laptop is considered obsolete, but I’m not in a financial position to replace it. Will there be problems?
Thanks

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Depends on how you look at it. Some features like sync might stop working. Shields can lose efficiency, you’ll not have the latest security features on your OS or browser which will make you more susceptible to hackers or malware, etc.

You can keep using the versions you have and they’ll always “work,” but not necessarily with full functionality.

There are a lot of people running High Sierra or even El Capitan. This is nonsense. This is all “you gotta dance to Apple’s tune.” Apple says upgrade and if you gotta pay another $2k or something, too damn bad. Well, I don’t have that kind of cash. Brave knows this. They know their demographic. So much for Brave being on the side of the user. Be proud, Brave! You’re right up there with Apple, Google, and Microsoft now! Writing garbage software and not caring about anyone but, what, rewards?! What should we use if we can’t upgrade?

I noticed this nag notice a month ago on Chrome Canary. It’s not on Chrome yet, so I blocked upgrades to that yesterday via some Terminal alchemy, even though I use the Evil Google Empire’s browser rarely. It just appeared on Brave yesterday.
I’m running Mojave on a mid-2015 Macbook Pro and have zero intention of “upgrading” to a Tim Apple all-soldered monstrosity, or “downgrading” to Catalina that added nothing of value and removed capability to use legacy apps. Big Sur and forward are pigs on Intel machines, so those are out of the question.
I completely removed everything Brave and installed a much older version from March with the Internet turned off. The nag was still there. So, I’m guessing either Chromium apps are installing hidden code on to my computer, or it’s Apple to blame.
There’s no way of blocking this irritation.
FYI, Windows users have apparently been receiving similar nags concerning upgrading to Windows 10, but there is a registry hack for that. So, my money is on everything Chromium embedding this garbage somewhere on the Mac.
Brave should add a toggle to turn this crap off, or strip out the offending code.
If I encounter more silliness like this, it will be time to abandon Brave and move over completely to Firefox.

A post was split to a new topic: Is Brave VPN still good on older OS and versions of Brave?

This just means that Chromium browsers (Chrome, Brave, etc.) will no longer be updated for older operating systems. There are other options. I have been using open-source Firefox for the last few days exclusively. I’m very impressed. In fact, sites that Brave had issues with work flawlessly. I’ve essentially ditched Brave due to that nag screen and future non-support.
Others to consider: Safari and Opera; the latter has a built-in VPN for times that you need one.
FYI, for older, non-supported versions of MacOS, consider a robust security suite like Bitdefender which works very well with Macs. You really don’t need a VPN unless you need to mask your location. I also use anti-tracking Ghostery and uBlock Origin extensions in my browser for privacy concerns. And Adguard to block system-wide ads, trackers, and dangerous website threats, along with saving bandwidth (though, I need to turn it off for some sites to work.)

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Partially true. What happens is code changes. Essentially in order to stay available to older devices, you have to add a bunch of lines of code and put in many hours of work to make it compatible. That labor costs companies and developers a lot of time and money.

So when technology advances enough and older things are retired, you’re left with no choice but to either upgrade or not be able to continue using newer products. It doesn’t matter if you’re using Linux, Mac, Windows, or anything else…it all works the same way.

You can’t. Everyone stops programming for things once support is ended by the company that created it. So if Microsoft stops supporting a version of Windows, you’re going to see nothing new being made for it by anyone overall. Especially “big names” because the average person doesn’t stick with old stuff. Just like you don’t see people going around in a horse and buggy, houses aren’t all filled with VHS players, you aren’t using the large satellite phones that existed before flip phones and modern phones, etc. If you have a TV, I’m betting you aren’t watching on an old black & white with the little bunny ears on it! You know the list can go on where technology and civilization constantly advances.

Define your definition of a lot of people? If you research, you’ll find nearly 92% of people are using Catalina. Only 1.74% of Mac users are using High Sierra and less than 1% are using El Capitan. That’s going by charts at https://gs.statcounter.com/macos-version-market-share/desktop/worldwide and others.

This means there’s only a very small subset using High Sierra and El Capitan.

This isn’t an XP or Windows 7 situation. High Sierra was released in 2017. We went from the most recent OS to unsupported in 5 years. My hardware won’t upgrade any further. There are many people here whose hardware won’t upgrade further or they required the old OS for an app. As other commenters have stated, they can’t afford to upgrade hardware. Neither can I. This OS version going unsupported in a matter of a few years is 100% apple requiring me to buy new hardware. I won’t. Now to Brave: give me a way to get rid of the banner telling me I’m “outdated.”

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This is still something being discussed. The last round of discussions/debates among everyone at Brave ended with the security team saying no. They want it there so there’s no excuse of anyone being unaware and because it is a safety issue.

That said, can tag @Mattches, @steeven, and maybe @fmarier to see if the teams can get together again to try to add the way to remove the annoying notice. If nothing else, for it to have been a flag or something. But other issue is trying to make adjustments retroactively. If nothing else, maybe would be nice if they could reveal how to Users could make modifications so it can stop appearing, even if they can’t/won’t do it officially.

Thanks for the info. Makes sense. Guess I’ll keep limping along on my old machine with my fingers crossed. Hard times for many of us.

Shiloh

At least, Brave should allow users to turn this nag message off. The answer for everyone, which is often uttered by developers, cannot be: “spend thousands of dollars.” Which is what they really mean by saying “upgrade your OS.”
You will have to pry my mid-2015 Steve Jobs MacBook Pro running Mojave out of my cold, dead hands, and not because I can’t afford a new Tim Apple device. It’s largely due to the fact that a new model (and I) will likely be the victim of ever-shorter support timelines, which has been accelerating dramatically since he took over, starting with 2016 models (arguably to accelerate obsolescence and replacement purchase timelines and make Apple more money). Source: ARSTechnica “Some Macs are getting fewer updates than they used to. Here’s why it’s a problem: Dropping old Macs can be justified, but some are dying before they should be.”
A single toggle switch in Preferences to lose the nag screen would be appreciated. FYI, I got tired of seeing it, so I’m now using Firefox full time as it continues to fully support Sierra (2016) and later and that can still run on Macs from as far back as 2009.

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I have four Macs here, two from 2013, and two from earlier.
Two are running Catalina 10.15.7, one has Monterey 12.6.6 (the Mac Pro, but which also can no more be upgraded), and the one that couldn’t upgrade to Catalina I installed Ubuntu 22.04 on it, and it is fine.

I loved El Capitan, and High Sierra while they lasted, but too many applications began to be unable to run, so I did the free Ubuntu Linux upgrade.
I still like macOS, but Linux was the only way with the oldest Mac.

I run a lot of different web browsers, but I’m pretty sure Brave works on Linux, and it is the very latest version running on the oldest Mac of mine, so that’s a plus.

One thing I must admit that made it tolerable for me is that I still have three Macs on macOS, despite being fairly old, that can still run most macOS software, and some apps that won’t run on Catalina I can still run on the Mac Pro, which is now not on the latest macOS, but it’s still only one version behind.

The pressure to get one newer Mac, such as a Mac Mini, running with the new hardware is pretty strong, as I work in software projects. :slightly_frowning_face: and I have not been able to work on any Apple Silicon (M1 or M2) software at all yet!

The Catalina numbers are wrong, as shown at the top of the page. They include Big Sur. Until Apple separates those out, all such reports will be inaccurate: “Apple [is] incorrectly reporting Big Sur 11 as Catalina 10.15.”

Okay. But does that impact the point that was being made about how less than 3% of people are still using the older Mac OS, El Capitan and High Sierra?

I understand frustrations for people who prefer the way a particular OS operates or who might be struggling financially and unable to upgrade. However, it’s important to realize that everything is created and maintained by businesses. Their main goal is to get profit. As much as one might want to be able to design something to last longer for the “select few” people who remain on older technology, it costs a lot of money and time to keep it going. And the lack of security updates also would put Users at risk, which is something nobody would want to incentivize.

All of that said, I’ve brought this up to @luke.mulks and others in the past, in regards to them trying to add options into the browser that lets people turn off the toggle. Yet, as I mentioned before, teams in the past have discussed it and said they’d rather keep it there for privacy & security purposes. It’s making sure whoever is using that browser knows that they aren’t getting the most recent protections or features. They have no idea how many people are using your device. Just because one person would turn off the toggle, should the others be put at risk and have no knowledge?

It’s hard to balance it all. Everyone has different beliefs and desires when it comes to products. Brave just is doing what’s best for their userbase and to keep everyone secure. Obviously some won’t be happy about it, but not much can really be said about that.

Understood. But true Catalina numbers could be 1% or 99%, or anything in between. Nobody knows. Making decisions with faulty data is, well, faulty.

Making turning off such a warning extremely proactive and explaining the risks when someone is doing so is arguably sufficient. “Are you sure you want to empty the trash?”

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True to a point. But what I’m saying is let’s say you have a family computer. One of the kids turns off the notice because they get annoyed by it. Later on, the parent (and owner) of the computer goes to use it. The kid has turned off the notice, so how would the parent know about it? That’s kind of the argument and issue there, in terms of it happening on a shared device.

I’m not saying I agree with it. I just know it’s basically how it was described before. And you see I’ve tagged people on this in a couple different posts. So the complaint and idea is still circling around. I’m just also trying to respond and let you know what has been expressed and essentially saying I doubt there will be any official solution to this any time soon.

Here’s a project for you: OpenCore Legacy Patcher. Works very well; I installed Ventura on an external drive to test it. My 2015 works perfectly with it.

The problem is that some apps will not work with a newer Mac OS. So even if the hardware supports the new OS - some people cannot upgrade.

I add my voice to the complaints! I’m on MacOS 10.14 and I won’t buy a new machine for the sake of using brave. :crazy_face: (Are you devs serious?)
My only option for getting rid of that dumb banner was to go back one version (1.51.118)… What’s the point, security wise?
Display it once but not every time Brave is launched! Or give the user a checkbox to dismiss it permanently, a secret flag, anything!
I love Brave and I’ll be sorry to abandon it because of a dumb design decision.

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Partly because many devices are shared between multiple people. So if someone’s 10 year old is using it and dismisses the notice but doesn’t tell their parents or anything, then they wouldn’t know, would they?

Yeah, this is in the works.

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