brave-browser VS brave-core

https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/wiki/Patching-Chromiu...

You'll notice the actual patching itself is introduced with the caveat:

Brave browser, which blocks ads and trackers, grew to over 50 million monthly active users in 2023 while enabling privacy-first models to counter Google's search and Chrome browser ecosystem.

Still waiting on the Brave stable release with the patched version of chromium https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/issues/35013

Manually download the standalone version from: https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/releases/tag/v1.61.101 and update it that way.

Upgraded Chromium to 120.0.6099.71. (#34740) (Changelog for 120.0.6099.71)

Brave Github repository

For those looking for a fix: Use the latest Nightly Build for Brave.

~Using privacy plug-ins or browsers. You can block our site from setting cookies used for interest-based ads by using a browser with privacy features, like Brave, or installing browser plugins, like Privacy Badger, Ghostery or uBlock Origin, and configuring them to block third party cookies/trackers.

Unrelated but about Brave and interesting to me: I recently found myself having a large upstream project that I need to maintain some custom patches for, and there's a need for deeper customizations and I worry that my rudimentary system of applying .patch files will turn into an unmaintainable nightmare of merge conflicts after every rebase. I was thinking about possible solutions, and it occurred to me that Brave being Chromium-based must have this same challenge but an order of magnitude more difficult, so I looked for their code to see how they solved this issue.

It's pretty interesting! They do basically the same thing for core Chromium, applying a (big) set of patches[1].

Incidentally, I'd be interested to hear any ideas/approaches to this problem. I'm guessing if there was something clearly better, Brave would be doing it, but it seems like there should be a better way even if I can't think of one.

[1] https://github.com/brave/brave-core/tree/master/patches

https://github.com/brave/brave-core/pull/13737

(Incidentally, that PR number is not quite elite. :)

I disagree that it's lip service Brave has a ton of engine level privacy patches https://github.com/brave/brave-core/tree/master/patches

To my understanding you can't match it with just js extensions.

Only firefox on the highest security mode comes close I think?

Or ungoogled chromium? (brave has most of their patches IIRC)

Are there other options that have this number of patches?

Chromium is not 100% Google's forever and always, though they do currently lead the way, and with the most used/backed fork.

https://github.com/brave/brave-core/pull/19476

They have much more changes than just compile flags. Here's the repo where they maintain their patch set: https://github.com/brave/brave-core/tree/master/patches

Brave Private Ads toggle controls just Push Notification ads at this time. So, if you are still seeing Push Notification ads, that would be incorrect. However, it's normal to still see New Tab Page image ads, and/or other ad formats. We are introducing a new UI that helps you better toggle on/off specific ad units, and removing the "Brave Private Ads" toggle that can be confusing: https://github.com/brave/brave-core/pull/18938

Yes, being fixed. Github at https://github.com/brave/brave-core/pull/18922