Digging through the forums it appears that it was possible to use custom avatar images.
It sounds like all that was required was to find the directory with files named things like avatar_generic_orange.png and replace that file with the desired image in the same format.
However, I can’t find where those files are located anymore.
Hello @coolaj86, thank you for bringing it up. These icons are currently hardcoded in Brave code so the easiest way to use custom profile icons is to create an Avatars folder in your data folder.
This is Usually found at: %localappdata%\BraveSoftware\Brave-Browser\User Data\ (if running Windows), put your PNG files there and follow this list for filenames you can use. Then launch Brave.
You can replace any of the 34 default avatars, which won’t reflect in the avatar picker UI but will show correctly in the profile dropdown menu. Hope this helps. Regards.
The list can be found here: https://github.com/brave/brave-core/blob/master/app/theme/default_100_percent/common/avatars/avatarlist.
Pick one of them as your custom avatar name and place it at ~/Library/Application Support/BraveSoftware/Brave-Browser/Avatars.
Then relaunch Brave and head to profile settings. As mentioned above the selection UI will not show the updated avatar, but once you’ve selected it, it will show up correctly in Brave.