Site-Level Cookie Management

I love that the Brave app currently blocks third-party tracking; however, I’d like to see inclusion of cookie and device recognition options in the Brave Shields menu on iOS, in the same way as the desktop version.

Currently, the only way to limit 1st-party cookies is to clear all of them, manually, after a browsing session. This presents two problems to me. First, I do have a few sites that I trust and want to retain cookies for (e.g. qwant, to retain my search settings). More broadly, this takes an “opt-out” approach to 1st-party cookie management; I have to put in additional work to get rid of them, not to keep them.

The ability to set defaults (allow all, block 3rd-party, block all) and tweak for individual websites would allow users to determine for themselves whether they want an opt-in or opt-out experience. I, for example, could block all cookies but add Qwant to an “allowed” list. A user with different priorities could keep the current setup, but still block all cookies on sites they absolutely do not trust. In general, users would get to choose their privacy experience when browsing the web, with the added bonus of a UI that is more contiguous across devices.

Regardless, I’ve been pleased with my experience in Brave- keep up the good work, devs.

7 Likes

Totally agree, would be nice. Sounds like some people want two versions of shield. We’d have a regular shield, with granular cookie control, and then a private shield, also with the per-site cookie controls.

Similar requests from the past:

November 21, 2019: Specific shield configuration for private windows

August 25, 2019: Cookies control

2 Likes

I’d love to see this too. Ugly to have to delete all cookies just because one site has an issue.

2 Likes

Yes, granular controls of site settings like on desktop is a must. Having to constantly alter universal shield settings for the same sites over and over gets tiring. I want to be able to block everything by default in my universal settings, then whitelist as needed like I can do on desktop.

2 Likes

I’m not sure if I understand this thread correctly. Brave on iOS cannot block first-party cookies on a specific website. Is this correct? So if I want to block cookies ONLY on example.com but not on other websites this would not be possible.

On Android there was a way to block certain websites from using cookies.

2 Likes