Question Brave customizable?

[n8chavez]

Is Brave the least bit customizable? I'm not looking for Vivaldi-level tweaking but some customizability would be nice. For example, I can't even put spacers in bookmarks bar to prevent all my bookmarks from being squished together? Also, it is possible to default webpages to 130% but yet not have extensions equal that zoom? Currently, extensions like bitwarden also reflect that default zoom percentage.

 

[Bot]

Is Brave the least bit customizable? I'm not looking for Vivaldi-level tweaking but some customizability would be nice. For example, I can't even put spacers in bookmarks bar to prevent all my bookmarks from being squished together? Also, it is possible to default webpages to 130% but yet not have extensions equal that zoom? Currently, extensions like bitwarden also reflect that default zoom percentage.

Brave is customizable in some areas, but not in the same way as Vivaldi. It is still fundamentally a Chromium-based browser, so a lot of the interface behavior is inherited from Chromium and not exposed for deep UI tweaking.

What Brave lets you customize

• Appearance settings such as theme, wallpapers, sidebar visibility, bookmarks bar behavior, and tab page options
• Shields and privacy controls on a global or per-site basis
• Search engine, startup pages, and toolbar button choices
• Some experimental behavior through flags, although those are not guaranteed to stay stable

What Brave does not really offer

• Fine-grained interface layout control like Vivaldi
• Native bookmark bar spacers or separators in the usual UI
• Independent zoom handling for normal web pages versus extension popups in the way you described

On your specific points:

1. Bookmark bar spacers

Brave does not provide a built-in spacer feature for the bookmarks bar. That limitation is common across Chromium browsers. Some users work around it by creating folders or bookmarks with short blank-looking names, but that is only a visual hack and usually not very clean.

So if you want true toolbar spacing and layout control, Brave is not very flexible there.

2. Default page zoom at 130% without affecting extensions

As far as normal Brave settings go, I am not aware of a supported built-in way to set page zoom to 130% while keeping extension popups such as Bitwarden at 100%.

In Chromium-based browsers, extension popups often follow the browser/UI scaling behavior closely enough that this separation is limited or unavailable. If Brave has not added a dedicated control for extension popup zoom, then there is likely no clean native solution.

Practical takeaway

If your priority is privacy with moderate customization, Brave is reasonable.

If your priority is interface control, layout tweaking, and small usability adjustments like bookmark spacers or more granular zoom behavior, Brave is fairly limited and Vivaldi is still much stronger.

Possible workarounds

• Use bookmark folders or symbol-only bookmark names as crude separators
• Check Brave flags carefully, but do not rely on them as a long-term solution
• Use OS-level display scaling only if you are comfortable with broader UI changes, since that affects more than just web pages

Conclusion

Brave is customizable to a point, but for the two examples you gave, it is quite limited. Native bookmark bar spacers are essentially not there, and separate default zoom behavior for websites versus extension popups is not something Brave reliably exposes.

 

[n8chavez]

The odd thing is that Vivaldi is a Chromium browser and can do everything I asked about; adding bookmark bar spacers and not zoom into extension UIs. I'm not sure why one can do it but the other cannot.

 

[ForgottenSeer 116559]

The odd thing is that Vivaldi is a Chromium browser and can do everything I asked about; adding bookmark bar spacers and not zoom into extension UIs. I'm not sure why one can do it but the other cannot.

Vivaldi is quite a different beast. The underlying engines are all Chromium, but the UI and UX are completely bespoke.

Despite Brave being a deep fork of Chromium with an outstanding degree of custom code in the browser's core, it leaves much of the original interface and experience intact. Chromium uses a native C++ interface using the Google Views framework. Vivaldi, on the other hand, has implemented a custom UI based entirely on web technologies—HTML5, React, Node.js, and CSS. Vivaldi's proprietary codebase consists of millions of lines of JavaScript and React components that sit on top of the Chromium core.

That's why Vivaldi's customization is in a whole new league. Chromium's original C++ interface is totally native and accordingly snappier, but Brave doesn't diverge much from its modest customization capabilities. Firefox's desktop UI also consists of web technologies tied together by XUL, and that's a major contributor to the exceptional customizability: flexible web markup and code.

 

[n8chavez]

True. I guess, ideally, Vivaldi would have Brave's shields. Never going to happen, but it's the dream. (How pathetic are my life goals, geez?)

 

[Sorrento]

I personally have used Vivaldi lots in the past & as I remember the developers were ex Opera people ???? For me its overly customisable, but that is just me, an overwhelming amount of options that make little difference to the security of the browser, maybe that's why I'm a Libre Wolf fan, simple like myself...

 

[oldschool]

I personally have used Vivaldi lots in the past & as I remember the developers were ex Opera people ???? For me its overly customisable, but that is just me, an overwhelming amount of options that make little difference to the security of the browser

Indeed, it's options are overkill but obviously some relatively small number of users prefer it. I take one look after an install and immediately uninstall.

 

[lokamoka820]

True. I guess, ideally, Vivaldi would have Brave's shields. Never going to happen, but it's the dream. (How pathetic are my life goals, geez?)

I like to add uBlock Origin Light to Vivaldi and let its built-in anti-tracker enabled, while uBlock Origin Light block ads better I found that Vivaldi blocks trackers better.

 

[n8chavez]

Yeah. That might be the way I go, once AdGuard for windows forces users to version 8.x. It's a shame because I really like Brave's/CatsXP's built-in shields.

 

[rashmi]

Indeed, it's options are overkill but obviously some relatively small number of users prefer it. I take one look after an install and immediately uninstall.

Vivaldi may have overkill features, but you can effortlessly killover the setup! Right-click to remove any unnecessary features from the interface. In the settings, customize the options that are familiar or similar to Chrome; the rest/most you can leave untouched, as they are productivity-focused for power users. Later, as with any browser, you can adjust settings to suit your needs or preferences. In my experience, Vivaldi has never disrupted my customized settings.