Debloat chromium browsers with policies

General
21

Because Brave Shields are not a full replacement for uBO. Also, uBO has other features not inherently available in Brave.

22

What for example? I would say for the target audiences that these policies are meant for are best suited using Shields.

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23

Features like element picker and element zapper for example.

24

Untrue those are implemented into brave, you do have a built in element picker and zapper

Pick anything else

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25

Where exactly? I donā€™t use Brave so I may be misremembering. I can give it try to see how it works.

26

On Desktop: Right click anywhere and you should see the ā€œBlock elementsā€ option above ā€œInspectā€

On Mobile: Click Shields icon ā†’ Advanced controls ā†’ Block element

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27

Iā€™m happy that Brave have documented how to disable via policy a few more of itā€™s features/anti-features. But there are a lot of settings that still arenā€™t documented.

I think Iā€™ve got HttpsOnlyMode working through trial and error and Chromiumā€™s documentation. There are a handful of other things Iā€™d like to enable/disable via policy. Does anyone know whether itā€™s possible to use policies to:

  1. Disable New Tab Page ads
  2. Disable Search Ads
  3. Enable ā€˜Aggressively block trackers and adsā€™ in shields
  4. Enable Forgetful Browsing
    • preset some cookie exceptions for forgetful browsing
  5. Disable Braveā€™s entire advertising & ad analytics subsystem
  6. Disable other crypto/web3 stuff beyond just Brave Wallet

@SkewedZeppelin I recall that you maintained a policy for Chromium, but that was a few years ago. Is that something you still mantain?

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28

From my experience it doesnā€™t give as fine of a control to select the HTML elements on a page as uBO does. Sometimes itā€™s tricky and I have to cycle through several options to block precisely what I want. I see that both options allow me to write custom CSS selectors, but Iā€™m way too lazy for that. Thatā€™s the only reason why Iā€™m using Brave with uBO now, but would love to not have to.

29

Itā€™s fine for me, but yes, the picker could get QoL improvements.

30

Well this is just horrible. A ā€œdebloatā€ script forcefully installed a bunch of bloated extensions that one shouldnā€™t really need.

To summarize what I think is happening in this thread:
linked ā€debloatā€ scripts = bad

browser group policy configuration = good (if you can handle the browser and platform-specific instructions)

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31

Not sure if Iā€™m jumping into conclusions but it seems that you are looking to transform the Brave Browser in some sort of Ungoogled Chromium + uBO via browser group policy. :sweat_smile:

If you get to put it all together do you mind sharing a tutorial via PG wiki?

33

Yes, but it is in need of a refresh: Brace/brace/etc/chromium/policies/managed/brace.json at d3768eb9a757078c6c742cdfb0e908dfd7527b01 Ā· divestedcg/Brace Ā· GitHub

@celenity also has their own: GitHub - celenityy/Titanium: Policies to harden the privacy & security of Chromium-based web browsers.

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