Please explain brave icon with "Brave Browser from [computername]" appearing beside dock on mac

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On my main mac, I’m getting this Brave icon popping up beside my doc saying it’s from my other mac computer on my home network.

I’m sure it’s some auto sync feature or something but I don’t recall setting it up, so I’m curious and my search queries don’t bring up anything.

Please explain this feature.

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cc @Mattches @Aa-ron on this

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@Mattches @Aa-ron more detail:

On my MacbookPro, I sometimes get a Brave icon appearing next to my dock with a grey dot (cloud?) overlaid. When I hover over it, it says “Brave Browser from mac mini”. It goes away after a minute or so. I forget if it disappears on click, but it doesn’t do anything else.

The interesting/concerning thing is that the mac mini on my network does NOT have Brave installed, and it’s called “mini2”.

If it happens again I will take photo and/or screenshots.

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@bashley,
Definitely take screenshots if you see this happen again. I believe what you’re seeing is expected behaviorif you do have Brave installed on your other device. For example, if I’m browsing on my iPad, then move over to my Macbook, I’ll see a similar icon at the bottom of my screen where I can see/interact with the tabs open in Brave on my iPad.

This is a feature of iOS rather than one Brave has implemented.

1 Like
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Thanks, I’l keep an eye out. Glad to know it’s an expected behavior under the right circumstances though. I’ll see if it’s possible I’ve installed for only on a particular user on that machine.

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I also have Brave on my Android phone, but not on any iOS devices

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@Mattches @Aa-ron

Finally happened where I could get a screenshot.

Brave Screen Shot 2020-04-20 at 9.46.11 PM

When I click it, it just slides away. It will come back too, but I never am able to get it to do anything useful or control when it arrives or disappears. It is logically attached to the dock although not part of it - it grows and shrinks with the dock sizing and magnification. It won’t drag, won’t let me drop anything on it.
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Please explain what it is supposed to be doing and what the interaction between two instances of Brave would be. Some questions to answer are:

  • Do they share just open tab info, or is there some sort of casting of the whole tab for instance? The screen on the icon reminds me of a “cast” icon so that would be what many people would think.
  • What protocols are used? What port do they talk over?
  • How can I tell whether it’s coming from my own network or reassure myself that someone has not managed to connect to my Brave instance over some kind of surreptitious port forward?
  • Where is this feature documented so that people aren’t alarmed by its behavior?
  • Why does it only happen on my 2015 Macbook Pro and say it’s from a Mac Mini when on the Mac Mini I have I don’t run Brave; however I DO have a Windows 10 Pro machine and a 2019 Macbook Pro and an Android phone on the same network running Brave and they never interact with each other or with this one. All machines are current OS builds and patches are up to date.

Thanks for helping me to understand this feature.

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@bashley – :point_up: This is exactly the behavior you’re seeing. Please let me know if any information in the above article is unclear.

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Yes this explains the behavior. After reading the article I am still unclear on how or why I would ever want to use this Mac feature, but I’m satisfied that it’s something from Apple and nothing to do with Brave.

Thank you for helping me to figure this out!

  • Brent -
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@bashley,
Our pleasure – please don’t hesitate to reach out again :slight_smile: