Brave keeps crashing on Windows 11 from time to time

Description of the issue:

When I’m doing normal tasks, such as watching YouTube, and browsing Reddit, Brave tends to crash and completely shuts down without any error message. Sometimes I do receive the “Aw Snap! Something went wrong” message if the current active tab crashes, but in most severe cases, the browser application completely shuts down. When I re-open the browser, I’m greeted with the “Brave did not close properly, reload tabs” (which is a temporary fix), but most of the time after about 5 or 10 min, I get tab crashes and application crashes.

This is extremely frustrating and I’ve basically tried every single troubleshoot I read up online, such as:

  • Completely uninstall Brave and re-install
  • Clear cache and cookies
  • Turned off hardware acceleration
  • Turned on memory saver
  • Updated all drivers on my PC
  • Updated Bios
  • Clean installed Windows 11

I have a high-end PC which shouldn’t have any memory problems, and Brave is the only application where the problem still persists and I’m at a loss.

Steps to Reproduce (add as many as necessary): 1. 2. 3.

  1. Open Youtube/Reddit, browse for a couple of minutes before tab/app crashes.

Actual Result (gifs and screenshots are welcome!):

Crash after normal use.

Expected result:

Stable browsing experience with minimal to no crashes.

Reproduces how often:

Every 5-10 min or so.

Operating System and Brave Version(See the About Brave page in the main menu):

PC Specs:

  • Operating System: Windows 11 Home
  • CPU: Intel Core i9 13900K 3.0GHz (5.8GHz Turbo Boost Max) 8 P-Core, 16 E-Core, 32-Thread
  • GPU: MSI GeForce RTX 4090 Gaming Trio
  • Motherboard: MSI Z790 Edge
  • RAM: Kingston Fury RGB 32GB DDR5 5600 MHz (2x16GB)
  • SSD: 2TB NVMe SSD
  • CPU Cooler: EKWB 360MM Liquid Cooler
  • PSU: Thermaltake 1200W ATX 3.0 PSU

Brave Version:

Release Notes v1.76.74 (Mar 11, 2025)

Additional Information:

N/A

I’m having the same issue for a few weeks now. Only on one of my machines. There’s no specific thing that causes it that I can figure out. I have noticed that my bitwarden extension keeps becoming corrupted and I have to repair it. Not sure how or if those correlate, but they started happening almost at the same time.

Interesting… I have the bitwarden extension installed as well…

Have you tried to disable it and browse afterwards?

Do either of you see any recent crash logs available at brave://crashes

Yes, I can provide the crash reports once I get home later tonight in case you need it.

Not yet. I’ve just been repairing it and using it until it happens again. I wonder if the update of bitwarden extension triggered something in some machines.

Getting the crash report IDs is the first and best step to figuring out what’s going on under the hood. @BRANDENDEUCE if you can launch the browser and go to brave://crashes and share any crash report IDs with us here, we can take a closer look.

These are the 2 most recent on the list. I sent about 10 total.

Crash from Tuesday, March 11, 2025 at 3:15:14 PM

Status: | Upload requested by user |

  • | - |
    Local Crash Context: | 902387dd-b5c7-4623-8dd4-4b5dfb5fbb6b |

Crash from Tuesday, March 11, 2025 at 2:21:39 PM

@BRANDENDEUCE once the crash report actually sends (you can send it directly on the crashes page), the crash report ID should end in 0s – that will be the ID that we need.

Hi there, here is the latest one that just happened not too long ago…

Crash from Wednesday, March 12, 2025 at 12:45:51 AM

Status: Not uploaded
Local Crash Context: 9afcd320-16bb-4001-9dc9-699484161d09

Could you upload it, then provide the ID that is given? It should end in all 0’s

Crash from Tuesday, March 11, 2025 at 3:15:14 PM

Status: | Uploaded |

  • | - |
    Uploaded Crash Report ID: | a6331b00-41aa-7e0d-0000-000000000000 |
    Upload Time: | Tuesday, March 11, 2025 at 4:05:59 PM |

Crash from Tuesday, March 11, 2025 at 2:21:39 PM

@BRANDENDEUCE Can you tell me if you have any extensions installed in the browser at this time? Additionally, do you see the crash if you launch the browser with a fresh profile? You can do this quickly by editing the Target path of the Brave Browser shortcut on your desktop:

  1. Right-click on the desktop shortcut and select Properties
  2. In the Target path, at the end (after the quotes), enter the following string:
--user-data-dir="C:\Users\[your user name]\Downloads"
  1. Ensure that when you do this, you put a space between the command above and the string already in the target path. Also note that you can choose any directory – I just used Downloads as an example.

Once done, when you open the browser using this shortcut, it will launch the browser in a fresh profile. Please let me know if the browser still exhibits the crash.