Focus is nowhere and Brave remains unresponsive to keyboard after maximizing a window that had been minimized

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Context
I had posted about this previously (June 2024) but didn’t get a single response. I continued investigating periodically since and, after I discovered that one of my systems didn’t exhibit this bug, I spent a lot of time investigating the differences in extensions that were present on each system, because I thought that would be the most likely explanation. But today I found that the cause is not an extension but rather simply a combination of two Brave-specific settings (i.e. settings that don’t come from Chromium).

How to reproduce

  1. Ensure that this setting is disabled: Appearance | Use system title bar and borders

  2. Ensure that this setting is enabled: Appearance | Use vertical tabs

  3. Open at least one tab in a maximized window, private or not. For example, brave://settings will do nicely, but any ordinary Web site can also be used.

  4. Minimize the window.

  5. Maximize the window.

  6. Try one or more of the following actions, using your keyboard:

    • Press Alt+D to access the address bar.
    • Press the down-arrow key to scroll the page up. (If applicable.)
    • Press Alf+F to open the Brave menu.
    • Press Ctrl+Shift+D to open the bookmarks manager.
    • Press Ctrl+H to open the browsing history.

Actual result

  • The cursor doesn’t go to the address bar. The focus is nowhere.
  • The page doesn’t scroll.
  • The menu doesn’t open.
  • The bookmarks manager doesn’t open.
  • The browsing history doesn’t open.

Expected result
Should always remain responsive to keyboard.

Workaround
To re-gain focus, click anywhere in Brave (e.g. in the address bar), or somehow (but without minimizing Brave) switch to another application and then back to Brave. In other words, Brave is unresponsive to keystrokes only after the last action was to restore the window from the minimized state. When we return to the same window without having minimized it, focus is never missing.

Brave version
1.78.94 (Bug has been present since at least 1.64.116.)

Additional information
Tested on three different computers, all running either Linux Mint 21.2 or 21.3, or Debian 12.4.0, all with the MATE DE.