Brave

Brave is a web browser built on Chromium, the open-source base of Google Chrome, by Brave Software. Its main difference from Chrome is Brave Shields, which blocks ads and trackers without an add-on. Around that it adds its own search engine, an optional rewards programme, a crypto wallet, a paid VPN and an AI assistant, Leo.

What Shields does by default

Brave’s help pages list what Shields does out of the box:

• “Blocking most ads and the trackers that come with them”.
• “Throwing away cookies other than the ones from the sites you actually visit”; on Android, blocking third-party cookies is the default.
• “Making your browser harder to recognize and follow without cookies”, by randomising fingerprinting data.
• “Upgrading you to secure connections whenever sites support them”.
• “Blocking malicious code and malicious sites”.

Shields can be turned down or off for each site. Global Privacy Control, which tells sites you don’t want your data sold, is on by default too.

What goes online by default

From Brave’s source code for this version and its privacy policy:

• A daily usage ping to Brave, used to count active users; Brave says it carries no personal data and that the IP address is removed. On by default; the setting is Automatically send daily usage ping to Brave.
• Product analytics (P3A), on by default and shown already ticked when you first open the app. Brave says the answers are only readable when several users give the same one. You can turn it off in the privacy settings.
• Crash reports, ticked by default on a fresh install, with a box to untick during setup. Brave’s help page notes that “some personal data may be sent as well”.
• Safe Browsing, through Google Play services on the phone. Brave’s privacy policy: “Any requests to Google servers made by this component … will expose your device IP address to Google.”
• Updates to filter lists and other components, from Brave’s servers.
• The default search engine for a new install, going by the source code, is Brave Search in Brazil, the US and eleven other countries, and Google in most others. Search suggestions are off by default.

Brave Rewards, Sync, the Web Discovery Project and the wallet stay off until you turn them on. Brave’s privacy policy adds that “you may see Brave Ads even if you do not have Brave Rewards enabled”, as sponsored background images on the new-tab page, which can be switched off there.

Paid features and Google

• Brave VPN is a paid subscription, run with the company Guardian, with a seven-day free trial.
• Leo, the AI assistant, is free, with a paid Premium tier.
• On Android these, and Brave Rewards, need a Google account, and subscriptions go through Google Play billing.

Brave’s own code is open source under the Mozilla Public License 2.0, but the APK also contains Google’s closed-source libraries for Play billing, push notifications, casting and Safe Browsing; Brave’s own source labels them with Google’s Android SDK licence. F-Droid’s inclusion policy forbids such libraries. Brave isn’t in F-Droid’s own catalogue; it runs its own repository in F-Droid’s format.

Which file this is

• This is Brave’s own Bravearm64Universal.apk for version 1.98.63 (Chromium 156.0.8078.80), published as a full release on its GitHub on 30 October 2026, signed by Brave. Brave’s installation guide calls Google Play and its F-Droid repositories “the two officially-supported ways to install Brave on Android” and describes the GitHub files as development builds; this release is the one GitHub marks as the latest. Brave’s F-Droid repository uses the same signing certificate as this file. Whether Google Play’s copy uses the same key we couldn’t check, so we can’t promise that this file updates a Play installation or the other way round.
• Despite “Universal” in the name, it is for 64-bit ARM phones only: one file with all of Brave’s optional modules built in. Brave publishes separate files for 32-bit ARM, x86 and x86-64, which we don’t host.
• The 1.98.63 release notes list one change from 1.98.62: Chromium was updated from 156.0.8078.74 to 156.0.8078.80. The previous release fixed navigation using the brave:// scheme, reported through HackerOne. Among the Android changes Brave’s issue tracker marks for the wider 1.98 line: a switch on the new-tab page between your shortcuts and your frequently visited sites, and Leo’s free tier moving from Claude Haiku to GPT 5.6 Luna, which Brave says lets it give free users higher limits.
• A known issue: users who disable Google Play services report that Brave shows a notification asking to enable them over and over (#44215, open).
• The 211.0 MB file runs on Android 10 and later and declares 53 permissions, most of them for website features: sites can use location, the camera or the microphone only when you allow them, and the microphone also serves voice search. Our scan found no tracking libraries. Brave is licensed under the MPL-2.0. The source of this version is at https://github.com/brave/brave-core/tree/v1.98.63.

CPU types in this build: arm64-v8a (64-bit ARM, almost every phone since 2017).