How to disable Brave built-in extensions

Hi,

I was interested in getting the privacy features of Brave (modifications to prevent requests to google etc), without being forced to use BAT and Brave shields (and saving a little memory by not running them)

However it current appears to be impossible to remove them, with the settings built into Brave.

I came up with a hack that prevents the Bat Ledger Service from running, and also Brave Shields/Brave Rewards.

If you move/delete the brave_resources.pak file in the Brave application folder, Brave Rewards/Shields no longer loads.

To prevent the Bat Ledger Service from running, I had to modify the chrome.dll file in the application directory. By modifying the first instance of the string “bat_ledger”, Bat Ledger Service no longer appears to run.

I created a patcher (for windows) to automate this process, since it would be annoying to do manually every time Brave Dev updates:

I’m not sure if by disabling these extensions, some of the Google callbacks start working again or not… Seems that the ad-blocker is still preventing advertising from running though :frowning:

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Shields will always be there - that I can guarantee you. You can, however, set them to allow everything by default and/or disable them on a per-site basis if you want. With respect to Brave Rewards:

  1. You must opt-into the Rewards program - just because it’s built-in doesn’t mean you’re required to use it.
  2. [Menu] --> Settings --> Appearance --> Hide Brave Rewards Icon

It’s pretty true that basically I just want Ungoogled Chromium, the main problem I have with it, is I would need to compile it constantly to keep it up to date with Chromium security fixes, which Brave already does for me.

It takes my system several hours to compile Chromium and uses up my system resources to a point where my computer is not very enjoyable to use.

Perhaps I should build a system for this purpose and contribute my builds to the Ungoogled Chromium project… Although binary patching Brave almost seems just as good.

this is where we should have disable brave shields button as you are showing all the other buttons in the settings ! using brave shields should be completely optional ! setting them to allow everything by default and/or disabling them on a per-site basis is NOT comfortable /useful at all in my opinion. we just should have a disable brave shields button in the settings. (you know that shields interfere with many sites and extensions, i reported that some time ago)
can you implement it in the future versions??? . think about it !

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You mean like this @ada111?

IIRC we have something logged to add this, will try and dig it up and link to it when I find it.

A “Disable Shields Globally” button, it would essentially do the same thing as if you were to go in and switch the Global Defaults to Allow all [...] manually. Its just slightly less work.

The option to enable/disable Shields on a per-site basis is necessary for users to browse/view content for some sites. If you’re not concerned with privacy, who’s tracking your data, etc., then disable Shields globally. If you do, you need the option to adjust these settings as needed and, furthermore, only adjust them once (as opposed to every time you visit some site). Otherwise, you’ll likely run into web compatibility issues that - without the option to adjust Shields per-site - you’ll have no way of addressing.

So yes, “Disable Shields globally” button would be useful and should (and likely will) be added to Settings. But after that you’ll still very likely want to/need to be able to adjust shields granularly.

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“Shields will always be there - that I can guarantee you.”

You can patch the code out… Which is practically what I have already done, and appears to save me over 100mb of memory.

Well, you can and are welcome to – it’s not likely that we (Brave) will do this.

Thanks so much for sharing your work-around to totally disable BRAVE SHIELDS. Having to disable it on an individual website basis was driving me insane! Renaming the PAK file was a lead-pipe cinch and took under 30 seconds to do. Everything’s running spectacularly now. Browsing speed and responsiveness is noticeably improved by a quantum leap on my system. Well done and thank you again for your gracious generosity!

Brave Dev ( Version 1.7.59) Bat Ledger Service causes huge CPU usage

Disabled it and same problem

I have only 2 tabs opened. Brave Dev lately has become unusable. Will have to start using regular builds I think.