Tabs refreshing when switching between them

Browser Support Mobile Support
1

I have posted this before but it was not resolved and the topic was closed, however it is still happening and again, I have just lost two paragraphs of typing because I switched to another tab to check a detail and when I returned to the tab I was typing on, the page refreshed and I lost everything.

I usually mitigate this copying what I have typed but on this occasion, I forgot. But it shouldn’t be necessary! Why is it happening?! As I pointed out the last time, I am pretty sure that it isn’t the website (this time it was YouTube), if it is, this website (brave.com) also has done it.

I’d be grateful if somebody would look into this instead of kicking it into the long grass and pretending that it is anything but the browser’s fault - it doesn’t happen with other browsers. I would prefer to use Brave but it keeps kicking me I the ****'s!

1 Like
2

Hello @okulo, thank you for reaching us out. Usually this issues are resolved by deleting cookies and cache. Have you done it recently? Otherwise you should check your extensions and try disabling some of them since they might be interfering. In case it does not work can you try disabling this in settings You’ll find this in Settings --> Additional Settings --> System --> Hardware Acceleration Let us know if that helps.

Regards.

3

Are you aware that I am using iOS? I did post this in the iOS section.

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4

Hello again @okulo, sorry I missed the tags above. It could be our app leaking memory somewhere, especially if it started happening recently. Try deleting cookies and cache and we will investigate more about this issue. Thanks in advance.

5

I just deleted cookies and cache but I am pretty sure that I have done that before and it continued to happen.

6

No, didn’t help - still doing it.

7

I’m wanting to try to run some tests myself. Are you noticing this behavior on any particular website or does it happen regardless? If it happens with any particular website or type of content, would be good to know so I can see about replicating it. If I can replicate, then will toy with settings on my end to see if I can find a solution.

Other thing, notice any specific amount of time before it refreshes? For example, does it automatically happen just by switching tabs or it happens when don’t use the tab for an extended period of time?

8

Well, the answer to that comes in two parts, really.

The site that I have most often lost text that I have entered is YouTube. I have a tendency to check the accuracy of what I am writing so if I have any doubts, I open another tab and check - that’s when I return to the original tab only to see it refresh, disposing of my text. I have got into the habit of copying the text before switching tabs because it happened so often but now and then, such as the other day, I forget. And, I feel I should reiterate, it has happened on this (brave.com) forum as well as Twitter.

However, the page refreshing without me entering text happens regularly on every website I frequent. It isn’t a if I have a lot of open tabs - sometimes, such as when I just deleted cookies and cache today, I only had two tabs open, on that occasion, it was Twitter.

9

@okulo Hmm. I just tested on my iPhone 13 Pro Max running iOS 16.2 (looks like I need to upgrade to 16.3, lol). I ended up opening a YouTube video, went to type something here, started typing a Disqus comment on asurascans.com, and then I went to do some Google searches. I even minimized all of Brave to go to my iPhone home screen where I went to Settings to check which version of iPhone I was using, before going back to the browser.

I then toggled between all the tabs again, to which all my comments were still in place with no refresh. Even typed all of this out with my phone sitting on my desk. About to check one last time to see if they refresh. But it’s been about 10 minutes or so now. I was able to visit each tab and take screenshots. No change.

I’ll be trying to monitor over the weekend to see if I notice anything.

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NOTE
One thing I did make sure to do though was pause the YouTube video. If you leave it alone and running in the background, then it will auto play the next video. When it does this, it goes to a different URL. If writing a comment and let it go to the point of moving on to the next video, then your comment goes away.

10

Well, perhaps I should add that I am using an iPad Pro 12.9 2nd Generation 512GB (300GB free) using iPadOS v16.2 (there isn’t a separate section, as far as I can see for iPadOS so I used the iOS tag. I’m typing this via Brave on my Mac, by the way because there is a lot to type!

I should also add that as far as commenting on YouTube videos goes, I am invariably watching the video on another device (Android TV Box) and just using the iPad to comment either as I am watching (rarely) or after watching but I don’t have autoplay selected on the iPad nor the Android device.

That said, the text entry aspect of this is merely an infuriating outcome, it isn’t the problem itself - the tabs refreshing randomly is the actual problem. Also, when it happens, it isn’t just one or two tabs which refresh, it is all tabs (maybe apart from the last opened one). I think that focussing on the text entry aspect or YouTube is heading down a dead end - it happens with all websites regardless of whether text has been entered or not. I have tried other browsers, Safari, Firefox and Opera and none seem to have the problem. I just did a quick search on here and there were other iOS users with this problem and it seems to be, or have been, an issue with the Android version too. I also saw one thread from a Windows user with a similar problem.

I have tried disabling and enabling Background App Refresh but that made no difference but here are the current settings for Brave. Most have never been touched.

First within System Settings:

Location > Never
Photos > All Photos
Local Network > Disabled
Camera > Enabled
Notifications > Disabled
Background App Refresh > Enabled

Default Browser App > Brave

Allow Cross-Website Tracking > Enabled

Settings in Brave:

Brave Shields & Privacy

Block Cross-Site Trackers > Enabled
(I don’t know why this contradicts the System Settings)
Upgrade Connections to HTTPS > Enabled
Block Phishing and Malware > Enabled
Auto-Redirect AMP Pages > Enabled
Block Scripts > Disabled
Block all Cookies > Disabled
Block Fingerprinting > Enabled
Block Cookie Consent Notices > Disabled
Content Filtering > the only enabled filter is Fanboy’s Mobile Notification List

Skipping the Clear Private Data and Manage Website Data as they seem to be actions which the user performs as required.

Private Browsing Only > Disabled
Block Popups > Enabled
Block ‘Switch to App’ Notices > Enabled (doesn’t work on e-mail links)
Allow universal links to open in external apps > Enabled
Block Dangerous Sites > Enabled
Allow Privacy-Preserving Product Analytics (P3A) Enabled

Brave Rewards > Disabled
Brave News > Disabled
Brave Firewall + VPN > Disabled

Search Engines
Standard Tab > Brave Search
Private Tab > DuckDuckGo
Quick Search Engines > default plus some I added: eBay (UK), Amazon (UK), Rumble
Sync > Disabled
Always Request Desktop Site > Enabled (I don’t want a mobile site on a 12.9" screen!)
Enable Pull-to-refresh > Disabled (I disabled this trying to fix the problem)
Enable Background Audio > Disabled
Website Redirects > both off
Appearance > Automatic

New Tab Page
Background Images> Disabled
Privacy Hub > Enabled
Favourites > Enabled

Page Zoom > 100%
Show Bookmarks Shortcut > Enabled
Close Tabs > Manually
Browser Lock > Disabled
Logins & Passwords > None

Version 1.46.2 (23.1.10.20)

11

No response?

I took the time to type out every detail from the Brave app and system settings hoping that it might help to get this (still) annoying problem resolved but nobody seems to have noticed.

12

@okulo Well, I couldn’t replicate. What I’m going to do is tag @Mattches and @michal just to skip past any wasted time for you and me. Hopefully they’ll be able to respond with some feedback before the weekend here.

And yeah, I apologize. Meant to tag them on Monday but didn’t set reminder to this as intended. Knew over the weekend, when you did the topic and your last replies, they aren’t here. And since lot of other things had replies or was made new, it kind of pushed this down to “out of sight, out of mind.” So at least your reply here was able to bring it back up to sight.

13

Thanks. I appreciate it.

14

Taking a look at this — sorry for the late response time. After a quick search, this does appear to be both a feature and an issue with Chromium based browsers. I’m seeing several reports for this exact same issue for Chrome on iOS.

This refreshing may be a result of your device running low on memory. While I’m not convinced this is the reason you’re having this issue, I do feel like I should ask you to confirm that when this behavior occurs, you’re not using ton of apps at once and, further, you are not running low on system storage on your device at this time?

Regardless, as far as I can tell, there does not appear to be a way to stop this refreshing from happening automatically — that said, I think the main issue is figuring out why the refresh is happening to begin with, considering @Saoiray did his best to reproduce the issue on his end and was unable to. I also tried to reproduce the issue on my iPad (7th gen, iPadOS 16.2) and was unable to do so — no auto-refresh of any kind.

I’ve asked our iOS team about this to see if they know what might be causing the issue. I appreciate your patience and hope to have more information for you soon.

15

Thank you for taking the time to look into this.

I suspected that it may be something like this but I thought it might be the cache flushing itself but I dont have the technical knowledge to diagnose or articulate my suspicions.

As I mentioned, I am using a 12.9” iPad Pro v2 which has 4/512GB with 300GB free. I rarely have many memory-hungry apps running as I tend to quit them when they are not in use - though I remember Apple once saying that this is not necessary it is just a habit - but I usually have Mail, Calendar, Messages, Gmail and a delivery tracking app called Parcel as well as Brave running and judging by the nature of the other apps, I suspect that Brave uses by far the most memory.

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16

Our peak memory usage for most users is around 250MB

17

I’m not sure of the best way to check this on a per-app basis but I found a free app which indicated the total memory in use; i.e. active, wired, inactive, free and by launching, running and quitting Brave with no other apps active, I could see that it was using about 250MB.

18

yep, we have metrics data for our app and it’s around 250, and it’s been in 150-250 range forever. Not sure whether it’s high or low compared to other browsers though

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19

I do not have ios but android and I have had this problem since I started with brave browser sometime last year so, same issue in both op sys.

My phone has plenty space and ram, all updates(even brave), no glitches in firm or software. Everything runs smooth but, the one thing I need to work is for my web pages within the browser to stay static. Alas, just like the user above states, every time i am working within the browser and I go to switch to a new or open tab, that tab/web page refreshes. Again, as the user stated, it effects my work flow. This has always been an issue with me and my experience with brave browser.

I have researched how to fix the issue and in all the other major browsers you have to download anywhere from one to multiple browser extensions just to turn off refresh.

If this was a ram issue my video and photo editing programs would lag but they do not. I checked my memory usage and it says 342MB for average but the base is only 145MB . Also, I just dumped all cache and unusable site info and still the same issue.

Relevant Question for this String Topic:
Should we not go hard with this browser? I have alot of tabs open so I can get alot done.
What is the standard amount of tabs we can open before automatic refresh rate kicks in? Is that the issue, how many tabs we can have open before it pulls too much power? Also, if the same refresh rate issue is stoped in other browsers by installing extensions, then what can we do to override the issue with brave?

Thanks

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20

Does this happen with other third-party browsers?

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