Using Brave on macOS (not Yosemite of course ) Monterey. Recently Brave displays that it is being “managed by your organisation”.
To me this seems not true, since I am a single user. I use DEVONtechnologies plugin to save to DEVONthink. This then happens by selecting > Print > PDF to DEVONthink.
Then later on I noticed this “managed by your organisation” thing.
I do have xcode installed.
What item should I add to com.brave.Browser.plist to tackle this situation?
FYI: I recently started to use a second (windows) laptop, and at first I thought something happe
@ipanini if you go to brave://policy what do you see?
Doesn’t matter if “single user.” What matters is who owns the laptop and if they have input any admin controls. Plist is only one of the small areas but there are higher tier network or device restrictions that can be put in place.
Just for clarification, is this a device you purchased yourself and that is running on your own network or might this be something that is provided by a school or workplace? And is this on your own home network or something at a school or workplace?
@ipanini I’m trying to think. When you say the plugin, do you mean extension? And in the Chrome and others where you said you don’t have this issue, are they also using this same setup?
I know for it to show disable print preview as in place, it seems you have something that has the restriction. I’m trying to remember if the Show More tells you anything useful.
I’m not too familiar with Mac so I was kind of running some things through AI as well and have this that you could check.
When Brave (or Chrome) labels a policy’s “Source” as Platform, it means the policy is coming from outside the normal user-level preference file—typically from a system-level or OS-driven source. On macOS, that usually means one of the following:
A configuration profile (e.g., via MDM or a manually installed .mobileconfig file).
A system-wide plist in /Library/Managed Preferences/.
Another enterprise-level or OS-level policy file that overrides user preferences.
In other words, “Platform” indicates Brave sees a higher-level policy that the OS is imposing (rather than a user-level setting or a cloud-based setting). That’s why removing or editing your local ~/Library/Preferences/com.brave.Browser.plist has no effect—you need to track down and remove (or edit) whichever system-level file or profile is actually setting DisablePrintPreview = true.
If Brave’s internal brave://policy page shows DisablePrintPreview = true, then Brave is definitely picking up a policy from somewhere else. That “somewhere else” is usually not your home directory’s com.brave.Browser.plist. It’s typically a managed plist in a system location or a macOS configuration profile.
User-level Preferences vs. Policy
On macOS, Chrome/Brave can be governed by two different mechanisms:
Regular user preferences (stored in ~/Library/Preferences/com.brave.Browser.plist).
Enterprise policies (in /Library/Managed Preferences/, or a system configuration profile).
If the enterprise policy says “DisablePrintPreview = true,” that will override whatever the user preference says, even if the user’s own plist says “NO.”
Check for a Configuration Profile
System Settings → Privacy & Security → Profiles (on newer macOS versions).
If you see any profile referencing Brave or Chrome policies, remove it if you don’t need it.
You might have multiple copies of com.brave.Browser.plist:
One in ~/Library/Preferences/
Possibly one in /Library/Managed Preferences/
Or a custom profile in /Library/Profiles/ or under /private/var/ if you use MDM or had installed one in the past.
All of my prior comment aside, I’m trying to think if it’s something related to just this DEVONthink. I know I gave a lot of little details there and not sure how helpful it might be.
Let me tag in @Mattches just to see if he might have a better answer or guidance than that. But at least wanted to try to do a little research and share what I could in the meanwhile.
Hi Saoiray, thanks for keeping helping!
In the mean time I’ve increased testing. (I must say this issue lives already for much longer on this system, I’ve just lived with it up and till today ;-))
I’m quite confident that DEVONthink has nothing to do with it.
Have been looking into print workflows as that what they seem to be called. I do remember (very long ago) having worked in automator on a print workflow, but that was really many many macOS versions ago.
I’ve done some checking:
The print workflows seem independent from the app that is being printed to (I have print workflows that can send to DEVONthink, to Curio and to BookEnds, I think in the past I worked on “Save to Web Receipts”. But all in all I’m quite sure these have nothing to do with my Brave issue.
As far as your list goes:
I’m not using MDM
I don’t seem to have any Configuration Profile. That said, I can only go up until “System Settings → Privacy & Security” i.e. I don’t see Profiles there
checking other locations: I do have these:
erwin@MBPi9-1 erwin % ls -la
total 24
drwxr-xr-x 4 root wheel 128 Feb 26 15:06 .
drwxr-xr-x 3 root wheel 96 Feb 26 15:06 …
-rw-r–r-- 1 root wheel 833 Feb 26 15:06 com.apple.mail.managed.plist
-rw-r–r-- 1 root wheel 7508 Feb 26 15:06 complete.plist
erwin@MBPi9-1 erwin %
But these seem only for mail, or it should be in the complete.plist
For what it’s worth, I opened both these plist files with Xcode, and both indeed refer to my mail profile, I don’t see any reference to Brave
Are you aware of any other location of a system configuration profile?
I’ve also checked Google Admin Console, but nothing there either…
I’m actually inclined to think it does have something to do with DEVONthink, although I’m not entirely sure how/what.
@Saoiray is correct – this policy does not appear to be getting picked up from the .plist file otherwise the key value would appear there and you would be able to alter it. I also suspect that if you were to edit the file and add that key value and set it to false/disabled, the issue would still persist since it’s being picked up from somewhere else in the system.
Perhaps I missed this information but I’d be curious to know whether or not other browsers are also inheriting this policy? If possible, could you test trying to print in this same way on both Chrome and also on the Brave Beta build and see if this policy appears there as well?
When testing, do not install any auxiliary extensions or anything else other than what’s needed to perform the same actions that you’ve been trying to do in your original Brave installation.
Hi Mattches, thanks for jumping in!
The same printing from all other browsers work: Chrome, Safari, Orion. This makes me really look towards Brave.
What I also tried:
Enabled fast user switching
logged in as another user (both are admin)
I did not explicitly test printing, but checked brave://policy, no issues there
I also noticed, that the other user came with a new version… Not sure there, but I thought the application would be used equally for both users, that is, no difference in version
will try beta and report back (will be a bit later)
There is a difference in the beta version that I need to select to print using the “System dialogue” in order to get the list of print to application (as shown in previous screenshots)
Very strange. Would it be possible for you to share the link to the page you’re trying to print with me here so I can test on my end? Just trying to see if maybe the conflict is specific to the site somehow rather than the source device/app you’re trying to print to.
So I do not understand why, but (my) Brave seems to have a problem passing the print job to the print workflow. If that makes sense. Or it can just not call the print workflow.
In this case, I just copied over the url of this forum thread and pasted it in the beta version (without logging in).
@ipanini thanks for testing. To be clear, if you change the print source (for example, if you have it save to your system as a PDF or send the job to an actual printer, not using the DEVONthink option) does this make any difference?
) Monterey. Recently Brave displays that it is being “managed by your organisation”.
