What’s new in Brave?

Brave for desktop just introduced several new options to customize the browser to your exact preferences: Themes, and toolbar.

For themes, you can choose from more than a dozen colors in light mode, dark mode, or to match your device preferences. You can also create your own custom color variations.

You can also add or remove buttons to the main toolbar in Brave. These include buttons for navigation (like home or sidebar), standard features (like password manager or bookmarks), custom features (like Leo AI or VPN), or tools and actions (like print, cast, or share).

Once you’ve added (or removed) buttons from the toolbar, you can easily drag to re-order them.

With thousands of possible combinations, anyone can make Brave truly their own. To access these new themes and toolbar options:

1. Open the desktop browser and click the main settings menu (), then click Settings.
2. Click Appearance to adjust color themes. Or, click Customize your toolbar to adjust toolbar buttons, navigation, and more.

Pro tip: From this same Appearance menu, you can also try great customization options like vertical tabs.

New desktop browser themes

YouTube is already better in Brave. By blocking pre-roll, mid-roll, and on-page ads in YouTube, you get a premium-like experience, free of ad interruptions.

Now, you can enter picture-in-picture (PiP) mode in YouTube with a single tap. To watch YouTube videos in PiP:

1. Navigate to youtube.com in Brave, and select the video you’d like to watch.
2. Tap the PiP button at the right side of the address bar.

Note: YouTube PiP improvements will be rolled out in phases. If you don’t yet see this option on your Android device, check back soon.

Picture-in-picture mode for YouTube videos

Android’s quick actions search widget makes it easier to access specific app features directly from your device’s home screen.

Leo is Brave’s browser-native smart AI assistant. It can answer questions, analyze websites and docs, generate new content, and more. All with privacy and performance at heart.

With Android 1.82, we’ve combined the two. Brave users can now prompt Leo directly with a voice search in quick actions.

Leo in the quick actions search widget

Leo is Brave’s browser-native smart AI assistant. It can answer questions, analyze websites and docs, generate new content, and more. All with privacy and performance at heart.

In Brave 1.82, Leo got several great updates, including:

• Personalization: Add your name, interests, and more so Leo can personalize its answers to you. To safeguard privacy, any personal data you add will never leave your device.
• @ mention a tab: Now you can @ mention specific tabs in your browser. Leo can then reference those tabs when generating an answer.
• Easily attach docs and files: Attach docs, spreadsheets, PDFs and more for Leo to analyze in its answers.
• Gemma support: We’ve also added support for Gemma LLMs.

Brave VPN is the secure, fast VPN, built right into your browser. Brave VPN encrypts your Web traffic, no matter which app you’re using on your device. It hides your IP address, masks your location, and helps you access your favorite content no matter where you are.

In 1.82, we’ve landed two important and highly requested features: killswitch and smart proxy.

• Killswitch: The killswitch feature will automatically disconnect your device from the Web if your VPN connection drops, which can help prevent leaks of IP address or other data. Learn more.
• Smart proxy: With smart proxy, you can use Brave VPN and continue to access sites that might otherwise block traffic from known VPN servers. By routing traffic through intermediary servers, you can access content, streaming services, or sites that commonly restrict VPN access. Learn more.

New in iOS 1.82, we’ve revamped the new-tab tray experience. With this change, you can more easily access the Shred feature and page history; toggle between private and non-private tabs; and find or close tabs.

To access the new-tab tray on iOS, simply open Brave and tap the number icon at the bottom toolbar.

The new new-tab tray in iOS

While not new in 1.82, having the option to move the address bar to the bottom of the browser was one of our most requested features. We’re mentioning it here again so everyone can give it a try.

To move the address bar to the bottom of the browser:

1. Open Brave on your Android device, and tap the main menu ("⋮").
2. Tap Appearance.
3. Toggle the Address bar setting.

Alternatively, you can just long-press the address bar.

Address bar moved to the bottom of the browser

The Brave Search Answer with AI feature can generate useful AI-powered answers to almost any query. These answers appear at the top of the results page, and always cite their sources. With tens of millions of daily queries, Answer with AI is one of the most widely used answer engines in the world.

Now, Answer with AI is even more powerful thanks to a backend technique called AI grounding. With AI grounding, large language model (LLM) responses are anchored in high-quality, factual information from verifiable Web sources. This reduces hallucinations, and helps ensure the model can respond more appropriately to nuanced inputs.

To try Answer with AI:

1. Visit search.brave.com in any browser.
2. Ask a question.
3. The AI-powered answer should appear at the top of the results page.

Note that not all queries will generate an AI answer. If you don’t see an AI answer, first try a different query. You can also open Quick settings (the gear icon) at the top right of the results page and toggle on Answer with AI.

If you haven’t tried it yet, Brave Playlist is worth a second look. With Playlist, you can keep playlists of the content you love, right in your browser. Add any media and play back anytime, anywhere. Even offline. Listen or watch on a plane, the subway, or anywhere with a poor signal. You can even continue playing if you switch to another app or lock your screen.

To try Brave Playlist:

1. Visit a site like YouTube or Spotify.
2. Tap in the address bar to add the content to a playlist.
3. Tap “…” and then tap Playlist to access your content later.

Videos added to Playlist

The Brave browser is now easier to deploy at work, school, or other group-usage settings. Get everyone in your org browsing faster, with fewer ads and better privacy via Group Policy.

Learn more about Group Policy.

Brave Search’s Rerank feature is a simple yet powerful way to customize search rankings by boosting or removing domains from search results.

Make Brave Search your own with Rerank. Available for free on all searches on search.brave.com.

1. Visit search.brave.com in any browser.
2. Conduct a search.
3. Click or tap the up arrow / down arrow icon (Rerank) button that appears in the upper right corner of the the search results page.