Brave Browser ZorinOS 17.3

General Help
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Hi guys,

I saw the latest news about the Brave as default browser on ZorinOS 17.3, but I'd like to know if it's possible to apply the Brave ZorinOS settings without a clean upgrade, in other words, I did the upgrade from 17.2 to 17.3 and installed the Brave from software app, but the ZorinOS customisation aren't available. My question is, the ZorinOS Brave customisation is only available to a clean/new installation and not with an upgrade between versions?

Cheers!

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Hi, and welcome to the community!

You will have to make those changes manually, so no. But they're only a few switches turned off in the settings, as the help article you linked to shows. Just walk through each of those, and instead of enabling features you do the opposite.

The reason this wasn't automatically applied when you upgraded from 17.2 is to avoid breaking existing installations. By installing Brave from their official repositories, you're getting the software as their developers originally intended, and not without any customized settings.

That said, you will find your changes made in ~/.config/BraveSoftware/Brave-Browser/Default/Preferences, in case you want to take this file and copy it over to another machine.

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The Zorin Help item you linked to shows how to turn ON optional items that were turned OFF in the Zorin customisation, or were already set OFF as default in Brave.

I have not done this myself, but you could check out those same settings listed in the Help item, to your stock version of Brave, to turn them OFF (or confirm OFF by default) thereby applying customisation settings.

I am not sure if this other question of my own warrants a separate thread.
When I had a quick look at it on Z17.3 "Try Zorin", is it immediately asks for a Password to be created and confirmed for keyring (or something). What is that all about?

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That's a thing with Chromium-based browsers. This happens when you log in automatically or in this case if you didn't provide any login details since it's a live environment. The keyring is used internally by the browser to secure information related to passwords and other details.

It can get annoying rather quickly...

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Go into Settings -> Appearance.

Choose GTK for the theme, rather than Classic or QT. This will make it cohesive with Zorin's Gnome desktop environment.

For other options, scroll a bit down. You will find a switch related to Brave Wallet, turn it off. I don't remember every single thing Zorin devs modified, but you can find them all in settings (Leo AI, Brave Rewards, etc).

If you don't want icons related to these features visible in upper right corner of the browser, just right click and select 'Hide'.

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OK, So under normal installation and manual login, that password popup would not appear?

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I was using a passwordless login for Zorin 17.3 and recently reinstalled where a password is required to log in.

I can confirm that a password is no longer required when you open a browser.

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Hi, sorry for the delay.

Yes, I've been using several Chromium browsers and they all have the same behavior. When I login typing my username and password, the issue goes away.

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This week, after backing up everything on my Dell Precision m4800 laptop running Win10 (without specs to upgrade to Win11), I installed Zorin 16.2, and shortly afterward used its version upgrade option to go straight onward to Zorin 17.3. ***I had read about a Zorin-modified version of Brave browser being the default browser in 17.3, BUT BUT BUT I now have a laptop running 17.3 and it didn't install with any Brave browser. It only installed Firefox. Has Zorin abandoned making Brave the default? There are two Brave options in the SOFTWARE store, but the descriptions don't say whether either one is the Zorin-modified one that had been the 17.3 default browser. Seems like I should just ignore Brave, considering all of the controversy about whether it was a good choice. Thoughts?

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If I remember correctly, Brave is included only in 17.3 installer, not when you do an upgrade from an already installed system. Makes sense, they wouldn't change or install a browser for already existing users who may be using other browsers.

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@donkey_pal If you had Firefox browser on Z16.2 then you will retain Firefox on Z17.3. Zorinised Brave browser is included with Z17.3 .iso

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firefox was the only browser installed from the zorin 16.2 core iso, so of course I had it, having just installed 16.2 shortly before upgrading to 17.3. do you like brave?

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I do like Brave. It works fine everywhere, it's fast and all the unwanted extra stuff like the crypto currencies and whatnot is disabled out of the box.

If you want to install it and have the same set of defaults that you would get with a standard installation of Zorin OS 17.3, you can just drop the following configuration file in ~/.config/BraveSoftware/Brave-Browser/Default/Preferences:

{
    "brave": {
        "ai_chat": { "autocomplete_provider_enabled": false, "context_menu_enabled": false, "show_toolbar_button": false },
        "brave_ads": { "should_allow_ads_subdivision_targeting": false },
        "new_tab_page": { "show_background_image": true, "show_branded_background_image": false, "show_brave_news": false, "show_clock": false, "show_rewards": false, "show_stats": true, "show_together": false },
        "rewards": { "badge_text": "", "show_brave_rewards_button_in_location_bar": false },
        "today": { "should_show_toolbar_button": false },
        "tabs": { "hover_mode": 2 },
        "wallet": { "show_wallet_icon_on_toolbar": false }
    },
    "extensions": {
        "theme": { "id": "", "system_theme": 1 }
    }
}

If the Preferences file already exists, but you have a new installation of Brave (meaning, you haven't changed any settings) it's safe to replace it entirely. But if you have made any changes to the settings those would be lost, so you would have to enter theses options manually.

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