There seems to be a problem with deleting URL suggestions in Brave. I have already tried to delete URL suggestions using Clear browsing data -> Advanced. While this feature works great for other times, it never deletes old URL suggestions.
Just to be clear: I have also disabled “Use a prediction service to help complete searches and URLs typed in the address bar”. I might be wrong, but it seems that all URL suggestions are based on existing bookmarks. Not sure on that one…
So, how can I completely turn this feature off? I basically don’t want the browser to suggest any URLs.
@jst68,
To delete a specific URL suggestion, you can type it in, wait for it to be suggested, use the arrow keys to highlight the desired result, then press shift + del to remove it. I believe you can also further control this by enabling the #Omnibox-suggestion-transparency-options flag (brave://flags).
That said, at this time there’s no way to stop this behavior entirely – although I believe we do plan to address this in future updates.
I am sorry, but the workaround is good for nothing.
I think this is a serious privacy concern. Until this has been resolved, we will have to take Brave off the list for corporate systems and any system available to the public.
I am really surprised that Brave is not taking this seriously. I mean you always advocate privacy and security and then you aren’t fixing such a serious issue even though you already know about it. Basically, this “feature” is currently capturing customer data without permission. That makes no sense to me and it raises a lot of other questions.
Do you have a Brave road map on when this will be fixed? Are there other similar issues? Do you have an issue list available to the public?
@jst68,
Note that while you may be suggested these options, the data that the suggestions are pulled from are not being sent anywhere the way in which Google and other browsers do. This includes Brave and its employees as well.
@jst68,
It looks like this issue has actually already been resolved. The fix is currently in Brave Nightly, and will propagate down the release pipeline in due time:
Not sure. It says “Show autocomplete in address bar”, but it doesn’t say “Do not track/store autocomplete”.
Basically, there should be an option to delete all stored autcomplete records and a second option to turn off collecting future records. At the moment, it basically keeps a complete “search history” somewhere (local or cloud?) without user consent. Hiding it from display, doesn’t resolve the problem and isn’t a solution.
From my point of view, Brave can’t be used in ANY corporate or public space before this gets fixed. As it is, corporate and public installation would risk getting sued for a lack privacy and the inability to delete personal data upon request.
In fact, I would even go one step further and say that home users should be concerned as well since there is no transparency where this information is stored.
Again, I would strongly recommend fixing this quickly before it becomes more visible.
@jst68,
The data is stored locally, but it’s not hidden. You can simply delete your history/browsing data to get rid of the auto-complete data. This information is not being sent anywhere outside of your browser.
Someone could see this data of yours, but only if someone were to have physical access to your machine – and if they have physical access to your machine, they can see your history and anything else they want already.
I agree totally with jst68. not sure why Brave doesn’t wholeheartedly jump on this: allow me to delete auto-suggest entries. Note shift-del (suggeste earlier) doesn’t do anything. This is so simple - allow a user to correct (delete) anything entered or suggested…
Hi Aline, naw … just drop it.
I have so much run into this issue of “lets make this software easier to use so that the end-user can focus on ‘whats important to them’” – kind of thoughtlessness’ware. I was hoping for a more pure (?) experience but really Brave is so much like Opera,
like Vivaldi, etc that it just blends into the pile of ‘average stuff.’
I’ll keep using its mostly because my bookmarks (or is it ‘Favourites’?) are there. Actually I find the only refreshing (?) thing in browse-land is / was Edge - and ‘was’ because read MS is throwing in the towel and next version will be ‘YACKO” (Yet
Another Chromium Knock-Off”) product. Pity.
Anyhow, pls delete my posted comment, sorry to have bothered
you.
That is incorrect. Even if I delete all my history and browsing data, Brave still remembers the auto-complete. That’s exactly what I don’t like. If the deletion would work properly, I would be fine with it, but sadly it doesn’t work.
I also see no evidence that this information is indeed stored locally. If it would be, you could just tell us the location and we could delete it on our own until there is a solution.
@jst68 the clear on exit or clear options are definitely what you want. Those may require you to quit and relaunch before they take effect, but the omnibox is pulling those entries from History
Selecting the entry in the auto-complete list (using up and down arrow keys) and pressing Shift + Delete will delete the selected entry… unless you have it bookmarked. Bookmarks always show in auto-complete results (you need to un-bookmark them for them to not show).
If you wanted to view the raw files themselves, you can find them in your profile directory.
Once in those directories, find your Default profile directory (unless you’ve created additional user profiles; if so, go into that user profile directory). Once in there, you’ll find some files of interest:
History - history that is shown on brave://history/ and used for auto-complete, as you’ve noticed. You can also delete the other files (History Provider Cache, History-journal)
Top Sites - the sites that show on new tab page. You can delete both Top Sites and Top Sites-journal
Shortcuts - this seems to store searches done using search engine shortcuts. ex: if you do :g and hit space, then type a search term and hit enter. You can also delete the Shortcuts-journal file
The main database file for each of these is sqlite and you can download a command line client and open it up yourself. You should definitely be able to avoid this and use brave://settings/clearBrowserData to clear your data (make sure to pick All time)
I verified multiple times (just to make sure) while writing this post that all of those files mentioned above are cleared. The DB file will still exist, but with 0 entries. After clearing, you can quit to make sure (since the sqlite DB may be cached in memory by Chromium).
If you have bookmarks, it’s possible that they will show on history, even after clearing (because a call may be made to fetch the favicon). Bookmarks will also show as auto-complete results in the omnibox
The data is stored locally, but it’s not hidden. You can simply delete your history/browsing data to get rid of the auto-complete data. This information is not being sent anywhere outside of your browser.
The solution then, as @clifton mentioned, is to clear the browsing history upon exit to prevent auto-complete list from populating – but it should not be this way. I switched from Firefox to Brave, but this is a dealbreaker. I don’t want to erase my browsing history because it is useful to retain . . . but at the same time, I don’t want someone looking over my shoulder as I type a URL and see auto-complete suggestions from my browsing history. Firefox allows users to choose auto-complete from (1) browsing history, (2) bookmarks, and/or (3) open tabs. I wish this option was available on Brave. I will check again in a few months to see if it is possible, because even though Firefox has many issues, the auto-complete issue is not one of them.
@Rimutakaman for your use-case, there is the ability to turn off the auto-complete functionality of the URL bar. I believe this is in version 1.3 and newer. 1.3 is currently on our Beta channel; expected to be released Feb 4th
The details I shared about deleting cover the use-case described by @jst68 where they want to have auto-complete working, but didn’t want specific entries showing in the auto-complete
@Rimutakaman,
Note that you do not have to delete all your browsing history to accomplish this – there are check boxes provided that allow you to choose which data is cleared:
@clifton. Thank you for your feedback! I appreciate your efforts to provide details and your post has been helpful. I will wait on the 1.3 release to see if that improves things. My expectation is that there will be a feature to completely turn off auto-complete.
Like @Rimutakaman said, ideally it would be best to have a selective option to to turn it off by source (Browser History, Bookmarks and Open Sessions), but I would be fine if it can just be turned off for now.
At the moment, the browser is not suitable for any customer facing business environment because any employee might inadvertently disclose private search histories if they would be using the Brave while interacting with customers.
