Excessive 1.9 GB in Brave-Browser Folder

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1

Brave Browser has an excessive 1.9GB of data in the Brave Browser Folder in the System Folder (in comparison Safari only has 20 MB).

I want to ask for some clarity which of the contents of subfolders can be deleted. There likely is historic data or duplicate data that can be deleted, any advice on what can be deleted would be most helpful.

Following the folder structure: MacOS User->Library->Application Support->BraveSoftware->Brave-Browser 1.91 GB
→ Default

Subfolder data examples:

  1. → Default 1.28GB - > Extensions 1.04GB (Extensions have 5 folders)
    (Example) ->cfhdojbkjhnklbpkdaibdccddilifddb 783 MB
    Seems contain folders with duplicate content
    → 4.13.0_0 273 MB
    → 4.14.0_0 259 MB
    → 4.15.0_0 250 MB

  2. → Default 1.28GB - > File System 105 MB
    → 000 104.7 MB

  3. → Default 1.28GB - > IndexedDB 54.4 MB

  4. → Default 1.28GB - > Service Worker 55.5 MB
    → CacheStorage 39.4 MB
    → ScriptCache 16.9 MB

The amount of data in the subfolders of Brave-Browser folder is excessive compared to other Browsers I use to the same extent.

I would like to reduce the data within the subfolders that is unnecessary for the daily running of Brave.

Brave Version 1.75.180 Chromium: 133.0.6943.126 (Official Build) (x86_64)

Any guidelines would be welcome. Thank yoy

2

cfhdojbkjhnklbpkdaibdccddilifddb is the Adblock Plus extension. If you look in the data/rules/dnr directory you will find a lot of files each smaller than 10Mb containing the rules the extension uses for blocking content. The rules directory is 235Mb.

I have a profile which I clear all the data from each time I use it. It has about 10 bookmarks, 6 small extensions and nothing else. Its profile folder is 104Mb, so your profile has about 120Mb of data other than Adblock Plus and the default state.

Chrome recently introduced a new API which changes the way ad-blockers operate. They now need to have their content-blocking rules generated by the developer and uploaded to the web store as a new extension version each time the source blocklists change. That explains the large about of data usage, and might also explain the multiple copies of the extension. Hopefully Brave is pruning old versions after a period of time and your disk usage won’t grow by an extra 250Mb every time a blocklist gets updated, but just in case, you could consider removing the extension and using Brave’s built-in shields. I rely on those alone, and find them to be just about perfect.

3

Thank you for the advice Mythical5th

Following your suggestion I have deleted the Adblocker. I guess I can delete the “cfhdojbkjhnklbpkdaibdccddilifddb” folder.

Regarding the contents of the Default folder 1.28GB - > Service Worker 55.5 MB → CacheStorage 39.4 MB → ScriptCache 16.9 MB Can I assume I delete the contents of these folders without issues?

I do have many bookmarks - so I guess I need to reduce those also. DO you have any suggestion what could be deleted in the Brave-Browser folder once the bookmarks have been reduced? Any advice would be apprecaited. I thought of using a html file as the source of bookmarks.

Another issue since recent Brave updates is while using Brave it hangs until I delete the cache browsing data in the dropdown Brave menu, which easily is in excess of 1 Gb after watching some news shows. I tried to enable the “Enable Request-OTR Tab.” then restarting Brave, but this had no impact, basically. The cache browsing data is what is causing Brave to slow or completely stop.

Any ideas would be welcome as the constant stoppages of Brave indicated something need resolving.
Thank you