brave-core VS uBlock-issues

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?

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

As far as I know, they actually embed it: https://github.com/brave/brave-core/tree/v1.54.44/components...

Although I can't say with 100% confidence because their build system is some ... special

The best example I can give you is how you won't get any default Adblock list, and you will have to manually add them as custom lists and update them one by one (they automatically update after 7 days). They are going to workaround that by automatically add the default lists as custom lists, but they haven't done it yet, and the updating part will stay the same. https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/issues/26143

https://github.com/brave/brave-core + chromium

This would be the price of one of the four CDNs (6000$ per month): https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBlock-issues/discussions/2958

Current estimated cost for just ONE of uBO's CDNs: HERE. This is with other lists updating every few days. uBO's not a company, it's a volunteer project using free services, which have limits that we cannot cross.

The extension with the best success rate seems to be **uBlock Origin**. It is a community driven project with a team of volunteers, you can review the source code [here](https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock). You will need to update your filter lists regularly, this because Youtube changes detection methods daily. Here is how you do that:

Definitely a much-needed area for development. However, having gone down the browser extension rabbit hole, I've largely shifted my focus to user scripts. Granted, there will always be a need for specialized browser extensions like ad blockers (uBlock[1]), keyboard shortcuts (Vimium-C[2]), and password managers (Bitwarden[3]).

That said, I find user scripts superior for most tasks, despite some lacking UI niceties. They are easier to share, use, and crucially, audit—be it in terms of scope, permissions, or code updates. Plus if Manifest V3 is any indicator, the future for browser extensions looks bleak. While I don't agree with this direction, it's probably for the best for the majority of users, like my mom.

Your effort is commendable; however, should you find yourself looking for a viable pivot in the future, I believe the user script space is primed for innovation and could offer a good alternative.

[1] https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock

https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBlock-issues/wiki/Toolbar-icon - Says when it's loading settings and filters it will be yellow. Says exclamation mark means network requests were fired before ubo was ready to filter, meaning some ads etc might come through.

uBlock Origin a very efficient browser extension that blocks ads and more. Been using it for years and recommend it! https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock

In some cases, installation may be blocked until browser restart. This is protection against accidental mid-session reloads, Issue #717.

Nowhere in there does he says it disappeared. He edited a previous comment saying it went away, problem with such random report instead of very carefully going through systematic steps is that it's easy to make mistake. For all I know the section might have been collapsed and he overlooked this. Anyway, reproducible issues have to reported at https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBlock-issues/issues, and in there we ask people to be thorough so as to eliminate mistakes.

Adblock is an old, outdated, sellout adblocker, use uBlock Origin instead, I don't guarantee this will fix the problem you're facing but it is something you should address anyway.