A good idea is to research a product before using it,
check online reviews to see what’s included and what’s not. Also common sense to find workarounds.. for small annoyances.
For what its worth:
- Brave Rewards icon can be hidden and Private Ads disabled in 1-click.
- brave://settings/rewards
- brave://rewards/
- Settings for Brave Wallet, IPFS and Web3 domains can be modified.
- Brave Incognito
- Add a !bang (ie. !g in your search to redirect to Google)
- Or a bookmark your preferred search engine and click on it when searching incognito.
DuckDuckGo Privacy Browser uses their own search engine by default with no setting page to modify.
Opera, Edge, Firefox and Safari all use non-privacy search engines by default.
Both Brave Search and DDG incorporate
!Bangs function, a quick hack to make searching a breeze.
There was an article shared recently about if you use
Chrome browser then you support the BS Google are enforcing on their users and the web.
Believe me, I thouroughly searched Brave UI and web to see if I can disable the things that annoy me. While some I was able to disable using brave://flags and settings, I wasn't able to disable everything I wanted.
I did disable everything you mentioned, but you can't remove that stuff from the menu. For example, Brave VPN which is useless because it's not free and it requires subscription. That's literally an ad in the menu. Brave Rewards under also cannot be removed or hidden.
Another UI element which annoys me is Brave ad blocker in the context menu. You can't disable that either. Brave News, when you disable it using brave://flags, new tab page crashes for some reason, so I had to keep that one enabled. It's strange, but that only happens on Windows version, while on Android I don't have that issue.
And, the last thing—giant search bar with Brave Search. Entering !g isn't a solution I would like. I would like to completely remove it from incognito tab and only have blank page like all other browser have. I know I can change search engine of the address bar in settings, but that doesn't change the search bar.
For some, these are small annoyances, for me big ones. Because I like having browser set up my way, with features I want to use. Main reasons why I'm not using Edge are privacy concerns and it became the most bloated browser ever. But at least Microsoft gives you options for customizing it; Brave adds "features" and doesn't give you an option to disable them.
On Android you can change the search engine, idk about desktop browser though, haven't used it for a while now.
That is so stupid. Faced that a few times, had to reset the app and start again from scratch.
It's REALLY stupid. I hate that feature. I mean, it searches the web every single time you touch a word. The worst feature of Chromium Android browsers.
But it's right there:
View attachment 277467
Same for the cryptocrap. Everything has a toggle.
It doesn't actually. There isn't a toggle for everything. While some things can be turned off from settings, some things can only be disabled through brave://flags.
Changing settings from the picture above doesn't remove the Brave Search bar in incognito tab. And that's what I want. Either change it to Google or remove it completely.
