I was an active brave user and I have recently switched back to chrome. The main reason I switched back to chrome was “look and feel”. I like to keep my digital life minimalistic. Brave feels too bloated for me. When I enter the settings it feel overwhelming and “too much”.
What I like about brave is customizability. On android it is more customizable than chrome (chrome shoves it’s unnecessary features to user, which we didn’t ask for, like group tabs). Brave on android has dark mode, ad block, old tab system, bottom toolbar etc.
On desktop however I prefer chrome with ublock origin over brave. It’s much more simpler that way. Now the problem is syncing my bookmarks across two browser, that’s the dilemma I suffer from. On phone brave feels better, on desktop chrome.
I believe brave requires rebranding. I don’t like the brave logo. It has to be round. On phone or desktop it doesn’t feel native. I also don’t like the color scheme. Just go to the brave settings on desktop. The top bar that contains “Settings, bookmarks, history” is an eye sore. Click the burger menu, it’s so long hard to find something. Overall the browser looks and feels like an outdated app.
I need a simple browser that offers me security and privacy. I don’t need the webtorrent feature in it. I hate it when a browser tries to become an OS. Many browser tries to do that (Vivaldi comes to mind). A browser should be simple, just for viewing webpages as efficiently as possible.
You are not alone in this. There are several community members who have expressed the same or similar. I think it will come over time and be simplistic for those who want simplicity and be flexible for the “power user”.
I tend to bounce back and forth between Vivaldi and Brave, and between the two, Brave is by far the more feature-light browser, although you can tweak it to not utilize most of those features.
You can turn off or never activate the extra features. As chocoholic said, brave is meant for normal everyday browsing and also for the ‘power users’.
Like some users participate in brave rewards, some do not. Some users use the IPFS function, while some do not. Then some users use the Tor window as they can easily switch between clearnet and onion net rather of opening the real tor browser, just see a site via Tor.
It is a feature rich browser for tech-savvy users while also being good for normal users via their feature of default in-built adblocker.
Now, it is your choice if you want to use brave or not. But, I would suggest using another browser than chrome, as you mentioned the requirement of security and privacy. Chrome is pretty good in terms of security but really really bad in privacy. You can try vivaldi, firefox, librewolf etc.
I never tried Vivaldi before, but after reading your comment I thought I would give it a try. And at the very starting they hit me with this: “How much Vivaldi do you need?” as if it was a reply to my post
