Using Brave browser is a very smart decision because it is built to protect your privacy, it has a built in adblocker, VPN, and provides secure browsing so you’re protected from fraudulent activities online. The browser almost completely protects your online privacy and gives you full control over everything.
However, since the browser provides you so many incredible features, it is subject to bugs and small problems, a common problem with brave is that it often crashes upon startup, there are a lot of ways to get rid of this issue which we’ll go through one by one.
What Causes The Browser To Crash?
There can be many reasons as to why your browser keeps crashing:
- Problematic extensions
- Browser cache
- Sync chain
- Newsfeed problems
- DNS Problems
- Code problems
So , How Do You Fix The Problem?
1. Clear Browser Cache
The first thing you should do is clear the browser data, sometimes cache stores up and it can interfere with how the browser works in general and can often cause it to malfunction.
How To Clear Brave Browser Cache:
1. Open Your Browser.
2. Click on the menu icon in the top right corner.
3. Go to additional settings, and click on privacy and security, finally click on clear browsing data.
4. change the time range to all time.
5. Click on clear data.
2. Disable All extensions and the VPN
Disabling all of the extensions and the VPN is the second step because it will help in diagnosing the problem, disabling each and everything one by one will tell you what thing is causing the problem.
In most cases though, the built-in VPN might be causing the problem because it intercepts the internet signal.
How To Disable Extensions In Brave Browser:
1. First open brave
2. Click on the puzzle icon on the top right of your browser.
3. It will open the extensions menu, then click on the hamburger icon beside the extension name.
4. Click on remove from brave.
3. Disable The Secure DNS Setting
Secure DNS is a setting that allows you to use websites with the HTTPS protocol, thus decreasing the chances of you visiting fraudulent websites, however, this feature can also interfere with how the browser performs and can be a cause for crashes.
How To Disable Secure DNS In Brave Browser:
1) Open Brave
2) Click on the hamburger icon on the top right of the browser
3) Click on settings
4) In the left pane, click on Security and Privacy
5) Under the advanced section, Secure DNS will be enabled, switch it off
4. Reset The News Preferences
News preferences have been known to cause problems with how the browser behaves , especially when you add a lot of news websites and RSS feeds.
Resetting or disabling and enabling the news preferences will make sure that the news settings are returned to default settings.
Here Is How You Can Disable News Preferences:
1) Open Brave and click on Customize on the bottom right of the screen
2) On the left pane, click on Brave News
3) Toggle Off Brave News and check if the browser is crashing
4) Next, disable all of the news sources
Clear the cache , restart the browser then check if it’s crashing again, if it doesn’t crash then the news settings were causing the problem and you should let them stay disabled, if it still crashes then you can re-enable all of the settings.
5. Use Private Mode
The private mode in brave acts exactly like incognito mode in google chrome, it doesn’t save your browser history, passwords, cache and cookies, and it’s completely anonymous.
What can happen is that your default browser might have a problem within the saved data so it’s a good idea to try and use private mode.
How To Use Private Mode In Brave:
1) Open Brave and click on the hamburger icon on the top right of the screen
2) Click on Private window
6. Disable The Synchronization Chain
Synchronization, as the name suggests is a way of using your data simultaneously on all of your devices, be it your mobile phone, tablet , or another desktop.
Brave gives you a variety of ways to enable and setup sync across your devices, however, the sync may not have been setup properly which can cause the browser to start crashing and malfunctioning.
To fix this problem you’ll have to disable the synchronization and setup another sync chain by following this guide
Or you Can also watch the following video:
If the synchronization chain still gives you problems even after setting it up the correct way then you’ll simply have to disable it:
How To Stop The Sync Chain In Brave:
1) Open brave and click on the hamburger icon on the top right of the screen
2) Click on Settings
3) On the left pane, click on Sync
4) Another window will open and at the bottom you’ll see an option named Leave Sync Chain
5) Click on that and you’ve successfully broken the sync chain
7. Disable News Cards
News cards are the news sources that you have toggled on in your brave browser, sometimes RSS feeds don’t work properly and can cause certain cards to malfunction or not display properly. To fix this is to simply turn off the news cards.
How To Disable News Cards In Brave Browser:
1) Open Brave and click on Customize on the bottom right of the screen
2) On the left pane, click on Brave News
3) Toggle Off Brave News
4) Next, disable all of the news sources
8. Turn Off Hardware Acceleration
Hardware acceleration in brave works by focusing your machine’s resources into brave, however in some cases it can malfunction and the most common thing is that instead of making your browser faster it slows it down or results in the browser crashing frequently.
How To Disable Hardware Acceleration In Brave:
1) Open brave and click on the hamburger icon on the top right of the screen
2) Click on settings and from the left pane select system
3) Turn off the hardware acceleration setting
9. Reinstall The Browser
If nothing above has worked yet then you should try and sync your data and then reinstall the browser. visit this link to download the latest version of brave.
10. Try This Method
I found another method which works by manually tweaking the appdata of the browser, follow the steps below:
1) Type run into your windows search bar
2) Type %appdata% into the search bar
3) Go into Local\BraveSoftware\Brave-Browser\User Data
4) Go into /CertificateRevocation\6779 file
5) Remove everything except the License document.
11. Contact Support
Although I’m pretty sure that everything I’ve mentioned in the post Is going to work , however if nothing works then you should definitely contact brave support, you can reach them either via email or you can go through their FAQs section.
FAQs
How do I update my Brave browser?
Updating the browser might fix your problem, here is how you can update your brave browser:
1) Open brave and click on the hamburger icon on the top right
2) Click on About Brave
3)It will automatically check for updates and install them
Is Brave stealing my data?
Brave only uses your data if you choose to enable synchronization setting or participate in their rewards program.
Is there a browser better than Brave?
There are a lot of alternatives to brave such as safari, Opera GX and mozilla firefox.
Conclusion
Most of these methods are known to fix the crashing problem with your brave browser, however, if nothing works then your best bet would be to email the developers of the browser.
