Opening New Window or Tab completely locks up Brave for up to 7 seconds

[nomu]

Description of the issue:
After opening a new tab or window Brave immediately becomes unresponsive for up to 7 or 8 seconds. This may not seem so long, but I am constantly opening new windows and tabs. This quickly becomes a major inconvenience.

Steps to Reproduce (add as many as necessary): 1. 2. 3.
Open a new tab or window using any method you prefer.

Actual Result (gifs and screenshots are welcome!):
Brave locks up and becomes unresponsive for up to 7 seconds.

Expected result:
New tab or window is opened and I can immediately navigate to a website.

Reproduces how often:
Every single time.

Operating System and Brave Version(See the About Brave page in the main menu):
MacOS Catalina version 10.15.4
Brave [Version 1.8.86 Chromium: 81.0.4044.129 (Official Build) (64-bit)]

Additional Information:
I first tried disabling extensions and them completely removing all extensions. I tried disabling all components of the new tab screen. I tried restoring settings to their original defaults. Finally I created a new profile and tried that. With the new profile opening new windows or tabs was again fast and responsive. I would be happy to switch to the new profile, but I cannot find any way to import all my history data from my previous profile.

Update:
I could be wrong, but it appears to me to be related to my bookmarks. Upon reflection I realized that the trouble started after I used the functionality in Brave to sort my bookmarks alphabetically. I then rearranged them to show some specific ones on the bookmarks bar.

Just now I exported all my bookmarks and other password data and completely deleted all my profiles and reset Brave. Then I observed that in the newly created profile everything was very quick, no delay when opening a new window/tab.

However, after importing my bookmarks it slowed down again. Not as bad as it had been in my old profile, but no longer instantly responsive. This occurs whether I have the bookmarks bar visible or not.

Why would my bookmarks affect the load time of new windows/tabs whatsoever?

Update 2:
I was wrong, the problem isn’t remedied at all. After using my browser for less than an hour new window/tabs again lock up the browser for 8 seconds or more.

[Sheep]

I have the same issue here, since the 1.8.86 update. Didn’t go through the steps of deleting my bookmarks but I have a decent amount of them (the problem might be related to the bookmarks-filesize?) and the slowdown is about 8 seconds for me, every time when I open a new ‘blank’ tab/windows. When I open a link in a new tab it just performs as expected.

There are also other threads with the same problem:

Open new tab freezes Brave window for 2 secs

For the last few days, when I open a new tab in Brave, there’s a 2-3 delay during which nothing happens and I can’t type in anything in the URL bar. I disabled ALL new tab features (sponsored images, clock, frequently used tabs) in the new tab settings, but this delay still persists. Do I need to go back to Chrome? Or will Brave developers come to their senses and stop ruining Brave’s experience? (Win 10 x64 Brave version 1.8.86 Chromium: 81.0.4044.129 (Official Build) (64-bit)

Browser becomes unresponsive when opening new tab every time,

I’m having the exact same problem. Every time I open a tab it takes about 5-10 secs for it to load. That’s ridiculous. I’ll switch back over to Firefox before I sit waiting for a tab to open. Just started today. This is with everything on the dashboard turned OFF. I just noticed this Binance. Is that the cause? And if so, why is it still lagging with it turned off? Is it still loading but just not showing it? This goes against everything I thought Brave was about.

[stf]

Same problem here, started within the last 48 hrs. It’s lagging way more than 7 seconds tho. I’d say it’s a minute or more of the beach ball coming and going before I can do anything at all.

The only difference I noticed on the home screen is that the Binance widget appeared around the same time. I tried disabling it, then every other element (even the clock!), but it didn’t help.

I, too, have a sizable bookmark file—though unless something has happened without my knowledge, it has not grown exponentially in the last 2 days! So I’m not sure why it would suddenly be causing this sort of problem.

I’m on Mac like OP, but I see a comment from a Win user having trouble as well.

I’ve been working around it by either using “open link in new tab” or duplicating the existing tab, then doing whatever I was going to do with a blank tab. (if I remember to do it… typically I open a new tab out of force of habit, then drum my fingers and swear until it finishes stalling ) “Open link in new tab” is a smidge slow sometimes; duplicating an existing tab typically works best, as long as I don’t do it with a script-heavy tab.

[nhgn]

Happens on Windows 10 too! Anytime I tried to open a new tab (or click on a dropdown selection on a page once loaded), it became unresponsive for about 10 seconds or more. Super counterproductive! All started after the latest update. Can’t get anything done with it now.

[stf]

I just noticed that new tabs open in a private window with no delays.

And while I was twiddling my thumbs waiting for a non-private tab to become usable (yeah, I forgot and did it again), I was starting to think that it’s only fair for the “hours saved” counter to go backwards until this is fixed!

[nomu]

A temporary remedy for everyone stuck with this issue: I don’t recommend everyone subject themselves to this, but I wanted to offer it as a suggestion for anyone who might find some relief. This is what I wound up doing, partly as a result of experimenting with trying to figure out the cause.

Export all your data for your profile. Create a new profile and set it up identically to your main profile minus your bookmarks. This includes importing all your saved data (password, etc…) to the new profile and installing all your extensions, etc…

Just don’t import your bookmarks. If you need to use your bookmarks, export them to an html file and open that. Or open a window with your main profile just to access your bookmarks. Do all the rest of your work with your new profile.

I know this will be more painful for some people than others if you have lots of extensions or other customizations, etc… However, I was surprised to find it wasn’t nearly as bad as I expected and now I am back to using Brave without it lagging every time I do what has become second nature at this point and open a new tab or window.

I’m really curious if this issue would be repaired by exporting all my bookmarks, importing them to another browser and then reimporting them to a new profile in Brave. Or if it really is simply an issue created due to a recently made change to Brave that is exposed by having tons of bookmarks.

In any case, hope this is helpful to you.

[onmyoji]

@stf

I just noticed that new tabs open in a private window with no delays.

Does that mean this problem is caused by the new widget?

I don’t experience any problem with Brave on my system, but from the beginning I never used the New Tab page from Brave. I use an extension that overrides the New Tab page with a dark blank page.

I’m curious, for others that are having the delay problem, would installing this extension make any difference?

Blank New Tab Dark Mode

[nomu]

I can verify that using this extension does eliminate this problem. Turn it on, the problem goes away. Turn it off and the problem returns. I still don’t think that the new widget is the cause of the issue simply because I don’t see how it’s related to the other apparent cause, e.g. bookmarks. However, it’s seems clear that what the problem is, it’s directly related to changes made to the new tab/page code.

[stf]

On my installation at least, the problem and the widget showed up at pretty much the same time.

The only connection I can think of to bookmarks is that the thing is scanning them somehow… which would be not cool at all. But I’ve allegedly got it “disabled”, so it shouldn’t be doing anything. Hopefully it’s just some sort of coding mishap that they’ll find and fix shortly.

[TDK]

I’m baffled by the fact that non of the devs have noticed this issue yet.

Any word from them on any other media?

[wyattb]

Having same problem Mac OS X Mojave. Started couple of days ago. Turned off all extensions, still happens. Please fix! Thanks!

UPDATE: Adding a new blank tab extensions fixes the issue. I am using this one:

New Tab Redirect 3.1.5

New Tab Redirect

[Ldub]

Just updated to 1.8.90 on Mac Mojave, same issue exists.

Found another option that restores the default Chrome new tab page, and gets your bookmarks bar and top sites back. Install the New Tab URL extension, go to Options and enter this URL: chrome-search://local-ntp/local-ntp.html

Custom New Tab URL

[ngnty]

Much better than a blank page…

[Ldub]

Just updated to 1.8.95, Mojave. Problem still exists. Kinda sad that I’m actually starting to prefer the old new tab these days.

[Melchyore]

Same problem here with Windows 7.

Disabling HWA, extensions, creating a new profile (it works only for 1 hour and problem comes back), nothing seems to work.

[nomu]

omg, I love this solution. You’re my hero!

[HKO2006]

Thank you! I set it to brave://new-tab-page and got my most used website shortcuts back.

I also find that chrome:newtab will get you the lag but brave://new-tab-page works fine. I too have a rather big bookmark collection (2.18 MB), deleting them proved to work but I want to keep them.

[StevenCee]

Thanks for the workaround, but it’s puzzling Brave hasn’t fixed this issue, even though it’s been reported for quite some time, about a month by now.

[Ldub]

This appears to have been fixed as of V1.9.76, on macOS Catalina, at least. Thanks, Brave team, so happy to have my new tab page back!