I keep switching browsers on my PC. Though I’ve settled mostly on Microsoft Edge and Perplexity’s Comet there, on my phone, I stuck to Chrome for the longest time. It comes pre-installed and works fine out of the box. Except it feels cluttered, especially on pages riddled with ads and autoplay videos. Then there are the privacy concerns around Google and Chrome.
So I decided to give other Android browsers a try. Microsoft Edge wasn’t part of the test list, as I’d used it before, and it felt more like a PC browser on a phone. I started with Opera, then jumped to Firefox, and finally settled on the Brave browser, which turned out to be the most reasonable choice of the three.
A built-in blocker for ads, pop-ups, and autoplay videos
The first thing I noticed with Brave was the cleaner reading experience. Some websites throw a full-page ad at you before you can read the first sentence, while others start playing video ads on their own. Brave’s built-in ad blocker stops most of that without any setup, and it’s one of the lightest browsers I’ve used on Android because of it.
If you want to support a site you visit often, you can add it to an allowed list so its ads still load. I’ve done this for a couple of blogs I read daily.
The blocking goes beyond ads, though. Brave can stop background video playback, but also has a long list of YouTube-specific options to hide Shorts, Playables, recommended videos, and other distracting elements. Chrome does have a setting to block intrusive ads, but it’s nowhere near as effective. Expecting Chrome to block ads is also a little ironic, given that Google runs much of the internet’s ad business through AdSense.
I opened the same 10 tabs in Chrome, Edge, Firefox, and Brave — this one uses the least
All browsers consume memory, but which one consumes the least?
Brave is big on privacy
Trackers and fingerprinting are blocked by default
Brave makes a lot of noise about privacy, and for the most part, it backs that up. It blocks third-party trackers and fingerprinting attempts by default, so sites have a harder time building a profile of you across the web. This is part of why Brave keeps showing up on lists of the best browsers for people who care about their data.
Because so much is handled in the browser itself, you don’t need to load up on extensions just to stay private. This is important on Android, where Chrome doesn’t support extensions at all.
Brave also ships with its own search engine as a non-Google alternative, and it gives you finer controls than Chrome does. You can block JavaScript, social media embeds, and fingerprinting on a per-site basis. You can also turn off the AI summaries and hide the Brave Rewards elements if you’d rather not see them. None of this is buried, which makes it easy to set the browser up the way you want and forget about it.
The dark mode works brilliantly in Brave
It forces dark mode on sites that don’t support it
I read and research on my phone for hours every day, so dark mode is more than just a nice-to-have feature, and this is where Chrome let me down. Chrome’s dark mode only kicks in on sites that already support it, so plenty of pages still load as a bright white wall of text. On a PC, you could install an extension to force the issue, but Chrome on Android doesn’t support extensions, so you’re stuck.
Brave handles this far better. It can force dark mode on almost any site, even ones that were never built with it in mind. I turned it on once in the settings, and since then, nearly every page loads in a comfortable dark theme. The odd site looks slightly off, but that’s rare, and the trade-off is well worth it for how much easier long reading sessions have become.
Small touches that make daily browsing easier
Beyond the big features, Brave has a handful of small touches that add up. Customization is the first thing I went looking for. By default, the search bar sits at the top, but you can move it to the bottom by changing its position in the Address bar setting, which is much easier to reach one-handed.
The settings menu also lets you switch the theme between light and dark, and you can customize the main menu to add or remove the features you actually use.
My favorite is the toolbar shortcut, which you enable from the settings. It places a single button for one of your most-used features right on the toolbar, so you don’t have to dig through the menu every time. The options include new bookmark, history, downloads, voice search, translate, and more. I set mine to voice search, since I use it constantly to look things up while my hands are busy.
What’s missing?
Translation and search still trail Chrome
Brave isn’t a perfect swap for Chrome. It does have a translation feature, but it’s not as accurate or as smooth as what Chrome offers, and I still switch back to Chrome for the occasional foreign-language page. Brave Search works fine for everyday queries too, but it doesn’t match Google’s results for me. That last one is partly personal preference.
Brave also comes with its own set of features, like Brave News, Brave Wallet, Brave Firewall + VPN, and the Leo AI assistant. To be fair, Brave doesn’t force any of these on you, and most are turned off out of the box. Still, the settings page does put them in front of you, much like how Opera piles on extras such as a built-in VPN and crypto wallet. I’ve kept all of Brave’s extras switched off, so they’ve never gotten in my way.
- OS
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Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, iOS
- Developer(s)
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Brave
Brave is an open-source web browser focused on privacy, speed, and user control. Its standout features include Shields, which block ads, trackers, cookies, fingerprinting, and more by default, giving users granular privacy protection without the need for extensions.
A better browser for my phone, even if not my PC
Brave isn’t trying to be everything at once, and that’s the point. It’s fast, the built-in ad and tracker blocking does real work, and the forced dark mode alone fixed my biggest complaint with reading on a phone. Compared to Chrome, the whole thing just feels calmer and less cluttered, which is exactly what I wanted from a mobile browser.
I’m still not ready to make it my default on my PC, where Edge and Comet handle my workflow well enough. But on my phone, Brave has earned its spot. If Chrome on Android has been wearing you down with ads, autoplay videos, and no real way to control them, Brave is the easy fix I wish I’d tried sooner.
