Brave v1.86.139
Hello, first let me say Ive been using Brave and Brave Nightly going back at least 3-4 yrs without issue and in this very same configuration on my Win11 Pro PC with no changes to SW or HW on this machine. Ive had a Sync chain active for over 1.5yrs of that, until this last week, but only syncing between these two browsers and only on this one PC ever, it has also worked flawlessly for all that time until recently. I appreciate how well it worked for that time, so thank you, but this issue has made it unusable.
The issue is:
I cannot close tabs without the browser freezing up into an endless loading icon, and the browser must be closed manually (‘end process’ prompt auto comes up) to actually close browser but its completely unusable in this state. I let it do this for an hour once to see if it would ever sort itself out - it never did. When I manually close the browser, upon its next open, itll offer to ‘restore’ option which worked for 30 or the last 45days but as of late, last week or so, ‘restore’ fails and causes the same freeze before ever reopening tabs.
I am aware of the other posts very similar to this issue but none of the ‘fixes’ fixed anything and Im making a new post because I believe Ive narrowed the issue down, but not all the way, to google webstore and/or extensions
This issue has been present for 1.5 months, starting sometime in early-mid Dec25’ and I loosely believe it was aligned to an update I made of Brave Nightly, but I cant be sure on that.
For context, this is my use dynamic; I generally have more tabs open on the Nightly browser and I opt for them to start where i left off upon closing and reopening. I keep fewer open on the Brave browser, so when gaming, I only keep the Brave browser up so its less drag on memory. This is why I had a sync chain active so I was essentially using the same browser regardless of which I had open, regarding bookmarks, etc.
I only mention all this because when this issue first started over a month ago, it was only occurring on the Nightly browser and only a minor inconvenience, as it only happened once in a while, so the ‘restore’ function was working and enough to keep it from being a real nuisance, then it started getting worse on the Nightly browser, but it still hadnt happened on the Brave browser, but then 2 weeks ago, it started on the Brave browser too, likely because of the sync chain, I dont know?
Thats when it become more than I could bypass.
One weird aspect which I cant be sure on but I know its partly true is this freezing issue mainly happens when trying to close one of the bottom tabs (I use vertical tabs) but why, I have no clue other than those are generally pages I have opened more recently? Does that mean that this freeze never happened on tabs higher up on open tabs list - no, it did, but the proportionality is at least 80% more likely that browsers freeze when closing a tab in the bottom quarter of tabs.
Thats another strange aspect of this issue is its random, although its become much more prevalent, so at first 1.5mo ago, it would only freeze 1:200 only on Nightly and mostly on the lower tabs, then 3-4wks ago, it was more like 1:50 only on Nightly and still more on lower tabs but no just the lower tabs, then 2 weeks ago it starts on Brave browser too and its 1:10 tabs or more often its freezing up, then last week the ‘restore’ func stops and its almost any tab freezes up the browser. There is some sort of progressivity that Im lost on.
I want to also mention that most of my tabs are closed one by one, so not many ‘close all’ or ‘close tabs below’ usage but on the few occasions I did use those, the freeze would happen too.
I have disabled graphics acceleration, I have killed the sync chain and deleted it fully, I have deleted ALL browsing history categories including ‘hosted app data’ and it hasnt helped, however when I do an uninstall including deleting browsing history, and then reinstall, it works without issue until I start to add my few preferred extensions. Im not sure if the issue comes because of a specific extension or because its using the google webstore, but its definitely related to that as since Ive stopped even trying to install these extensions, Ive not had recurrence of these issues, but Ill be honest - its makes using the browser so much less useful so I hope this can be resolved in your next update!
I have uninstalled/reinstalled at least 10 times now trying to narrow this down and Im too worried to even try to add extensions due to this massive inconvenience but but when I look this issue up it appears that variations of this similiar issue goes back all the way to 2019, so that worries me! I hope this isnt that and this is resolvable, as I mentioned above, I have used this same configuration for 3 years, so why the issue now?
Sorry for the long post, I hope it has specific info that helps in figuring this out. I wrote this is segments so I apologize of it reads as though I mentioned the sme thing more than once. I tried to do a good proofread but who knows…
I appreciate any and all help!
JD