Brave Browser and the Extensions I use

[Tekguru]

 
I'm making this post in the 'guests / information' area of the forum so that it can be shared with external users. 

As I think most of you are aware I use the Brave Browser on the Apple Mac instead of Safari. This is down to a few reasons:

• A lot of the extensions I wish to use need a chromium browser as a base. 
• One of the extensions I need is the Apple iCloud extension and that only works with certain chromium browsers like Brave, it will not work with other 'Google-free' browsers such as 'Ungoogled Chromium'.
• Similarly, this rules out alternative browsers such as Firefox.
• It is free of the 'Google nastiness as you can read here, this details what the Brave developers remove when building Brave.

So from here I'll detail the extensions I currently have loaded within Brave. These change / vary as I move forward with using Brave:

 In turn they are (extensions in Red/Bold are generally in use).:

1. AdGuard AdBlocker - Turned off for normal browsing but occasionally used for sites which have issues with Brave Shields or uBlock Origin  [Chrome Webstore Link]
2. AdGuard VPN - My preferred VPN to add a level of extra security when needed. It's easier for me to use the extension instead of the full application as it means the VPN can only affect the browser not the entire Mac. [Chrome Webstore Link]
3. Bitwarden - My 'old' password wallet system, now replaced (and at times used in parallel) with Apple's Keychain passwords. [Chrome Webstore Link]
4. DuckDuckGo Privacy Essentials - Turned off for normal browsing, but occasionally used for sites which have issues with Brave Shields or uBlock Origin. [Chrome Webstore Link]
5. Faster Bookmark - A very quick and flexible way to add / remove sites to my bookmarks. [Chrome Webstore Link]
6. LanguageTool Grammar Checker - Best free online grammar and spell checker (IMHO). [Chrome Webstore Link]
7. I still don't care about cookies - Non-Avast based cookie notice blocker. Works much better than the inbuilt Brave system. [Chrome Webstore Link]
8. iCloud Passwords - Allows me to access Apple's Keychain passwords within Brave. [Chrome Webstore Link]
9. No-Script Suite Lite - A new extension I'm trying out which allows me to block scripts on a site-by-site basis. [Chrome Webstore Link]
10. Random User-Agent (Switcher) - Another new extension which I've got set to randomly switch user agents on a regular basis. [Chrome Webstore Link]
11. Still don't care about cookies - Original cookie blocker which uses Avast. [Chrome Webstore Link]
12. uBlock Origin - The best 'blocker' out there. On certain sites I turn off the Shields within Brave and use this instead. It tends to resolve very rare issues I have with the Brave Shields. For most browsing I have this running in parallel with the Brave Shield system. [Chrome Webstore Link]

 

 

[fowljr]

I never get around to checking out any extensions. My browser use is quite straightforward I guess!!

[Tekguru]

Those are the core ones I use. I want to be protected data wise.

Oh the NoScript extension has now been changed to this one.

[fowljr]

Hmmm. Maybe one day!

[Tekguru]

LOL, each to his own I guess.

[fowljr]

I guess I just don’t use the browser enough to warrant using them. I don’t have any installed as far as I can see.

[Tekguru]

I use the Mac most of the time so yeah useful for me.

[fowljr]

Yep. I’m on the Pad of I now. I got back from work, needed to finish a few things, couldn’t be bothered to boot the laptop. Microsoft 365 just works so well for me I must admit.

[Tekguru]

If you're in that sort of eco-system I can see an iPad doing the job nicely. No way on gods earth I could use one to do everything I need to achieve.

[fowljr]

True. It depends on what you are doing. Of course I do have the Surface Pro and a Raspberry Pi and a small form factor (OLD!) PC should I need to do anything more. I've just not felt the need to spend on a new Desktop or Laptop machine for years now. My computing has ramped down in terms of I can do more with tablet/phone these days.

The Raspberry Pi is quite interesting. I've had it for a while, Sue bought it for me, but only just recently booted it up. I love being able to pull the SD out and boot a whole new OS in seconds! (I know you can do multi boot on loads of machines!! It just seems more convenient on the Pi). It's not massively powerful, but a good tech toy!