Installing Brave on Android without using Google Play

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Just started using Brave on my laptop. I would like to run it on my Android phone. I have stripped out all Google account apps from the phone and I don’t want to log in to Google Play to get an app or download Brave.

When I try to download Brave, it takes me to Google Play and asks me to log in. My phone is clean and I don’t want to log into Google

Can I install Brave without using Google Play? How can I do this?

Using Blackberry KeyOne with Android 8.1.0

Thank you

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@sonoman you can download the APK from GitHub https://github.com/brave/browser-android-tabs/releases/tag/v1.2.0

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Thanks for the link. How do I download and install it on my phone?

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@sonoman,

  1. Visit the site linked above either on your phone and download the download the .apk file directly or on your PC and transfer the .apk file to your phone.
  2. Find the file on your phone using the device’s file manager – tap and install the browser.
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Apologies for this question but as a complete newbie, clicking the above link does not clearly show me how to download onto Android 4.4. Could you give me an easy-to-understand option to AVOID anything associated with Google please?

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@Pablo932,
Unfortunately you may be out of luck. I believe we have stopped support recently for Android 4.4 or earlier. You can try downloading the APK from our github, install, and see if it works.

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@Pablo932,
Until recently I used Brave on my rather niche platform, which is effectively Android 4.4.4, however with the update of Brave to version 1.3.2 I noted two things:

  • Sometimes the browser fails to start, and I have to do a restart to get it working again.
  • Adverts are no longer blocked, even though this is enabled in settings.

If ads aren’t being blocked on my platform any longer, I have to assume that the same is true of trackers, and so I have stopped using Brave on mobile. I am trying out Bromite instead, they still support Android 4.4. You might like to try it out as well.

On my linux systems, I still use Brave, and I am very happy with it.

P.S. For any other geeks reading this: my “niche platform” is SailfishOS with Alien Dalvik on a Sony Xperia X. Unfortunately support for Android 5 and higher is not available for this combination.

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That’s great news pakman … Just downloaded Bromite successfully and will give it a go. Thanks for your help.

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Go to F-Droid.org and download F-Droid Store. Next open F-Droid store on your mobile and find Aurora Store. Install Aurora Store on your device. Now you can open Aurora Store and use Anonymous session to download and install Google apps (including Brave browser) without authorizing the google account.

@ sonoman I have stripped out all Google account apps from the phone and I don’t want to log in to Google Play to get an app or download Brave.

I am running LineageOS on my phone so I don’t have google services at all. I don’t have even Play Store. So in order to have apps from Play Store I am using Aurora Store which allows you to download apps from Play Store without even having google account. Using Google Android and removing all google apps does not mean google has no access to your private data, photos, messages and everything you are doing on your phone.

P.S. @ social I am wondering why Brave is not available directly on the F-Droid store?

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