I’m confused about how anyone in the privacy community uses Brave Browser on Android because it doesn’t appear to be compatible with password managers.
I’ve never been able to get Brave autofill to work on GrapheneOS with Bitwarden. Works just fine with Cromite and Vanadium. Have others had more success than me?
I have google play services enabled but denied the networking permission.
Brave doesn’t support Android’s Autofill. It’s not a Chromium feature, but some browsers like Vanadium and Cromite have patches for it. The solution is simple: use one browser for logins and one for general browsing. That’s good practice anyway if you want to stay logged in on some websites.
If this is a known issue and users are expected to use two browsers, shouldn’t Privacy Guides be recommending another browser for Android in addition to Brave? It just strikes me as bizarre that the only recommended browser (except tor) doesn’t work with password managers, which are so essential for security.
Im gonna be that person that will say do your due diligence and check the URL of the website yourself and just copy-paste. Its a bother, but you’ll be fine.
KeepassDX autofills like a dream which makes me think it’s a Bitwarden issue.
I have a credit card app on my phone. KeepassDX autofills the correct password.
Bitwarden shows me 9 different entries - of course 8 of those are incorrect. After picking the right one, and telling BW which one it should use, it still shows me all 9.
Do you use the autofill framework only or other options like accessibility service or a special KeePass keyboard? Because it sounds like one of the latter two, since Brave doesn’t support Android’s autofill.
Sounds like you misconfigured something, because I never had this issue with Bitwarden. Check the general autofill settings and also the autofill settings for each of these entries.
I use auto-fill framework and keyboard in Bitwarden. Brave uses keyboard one and works fine. I use Helium’s fork of OpenBoard.
Did you have to do anything special to get inline (keyboard) autofill working? I just tried the Helium fork of OpenBoard with Bitwarden + Brave and it didn’t work for me
No, just choosed Bitwarden as autofill service… Tested Brave, Fennec, Cromite and Kiwi - all work with keyboard same way.
What version of Android are you utilizing? If it’s not GrapheneOS, that may explain why you aren’t running into issues.
When I investigated this previously, it seemed that the issue was that Brave IS compatible with the Google Autofill Service, which requires Google Services Framework to be installed. However, GrapheneOS seems to break this particular feature.
However, Cromite and Vanadium use the Android Autofill Service that’s inherent to the Android OS itself, so they work fine on GrapheneOS while Brave doesn’t.
Vendor firmware with google services. I turned off keyboard auto-fill in Bitwarden and now all 4 browsers use system auto-fill! That is better…
Ah yeah, that explains it. Unfortunately neither form works in GrapheneOS for the time being.
Can someone answer my very basic question: why on Earth should we (privacy focused people) even look at Brave Browser while we know all too well that this browser is privacy nightmare?
Because people that actually know what they are talking about, like this German IT security specialist, say that it is OK - not the best, but definitely not as bad as, say, FireFox out of the box.
This is not me, so not all 
IMO, Brave is the best browser for privacy. Sure, there are Tor and Mullvad browsers. But Tor doesn’t support for everything, while the latter is not even available officially on Android. Therefore, while I can comfortably recommend Brave to my friends and family, I wouldn’t recommend Tor or Mullvad to anyone unless they know what they’re doing.
And Firefox, nope. That’s the disaster for privacy (their default settings). Also, Google’s core product is the most important part of Firefox’s business model. I would use Chrome instead.
Brave is well-balanced between security, privacy, and usability. There are so many features that do matter, for example, the built-in crypto wallet for those who are in crypto space, so they don’t have to install an extension which comes with a ton of permissions. Also, Brave sync work a lot better than Chrome sync.
To the thread’s topic. I am using Brave’s password manager. So, I don’t have this issue 
Because it isn’t a privacy nightmare? It’s a recommended browser by many privacy advocates and also by PG.
Kuketz does some security stuff for work, but it’s pretty clear that he is not into OS or browser security when you talk to him about these topics. The advice he gives on his blog is more from a view of a privacy advocate who does a lot of network sniffing for apps and OS’s.
I can confirm this Brave doesn’t function on Custom ROMs (Calyx, GOS etc) but works correctly with password managers on Stock android.
This happened with the default settings on two android devices - a stock tablet running android 13 and an up to date grapheneos phone. BW’s autofill issues are fairly common judging from the posts in their subreddit.