Brave Nightly macOS: clicking profile does nothing on startup

Brave Browser Desktop Support
,
1

Description of the issue:

After opening Brave Nightly on macOS, the profile selection window appears, but clicking on either profile does nothing — the browser does not launch. The buttons are completely unresponsive. The issue started on the morning of May 25, 2025. The stable version of Brave works correctly.

How can this issue be reproduced?

  1. Open Brave Nightly on macOS.

  2. Wait for the profile selection window to appear.

  3. Click on any profile.

  4. Expected: browser opens with the selected profile. Actual: nothing happens — the window remains open and unresponsive.

Expected result:

Clicking a profile in the profile selection window should open the browser with that profile loaded.

Brave Version( check About Brave):

Brave Nightly — latest available version as of May 25/24, 2025 (updated the previous day). I don’t know the exact version because the browser won’t launch, so I have no way to check it.

Additional Information:

  • The issue appeared suddenly on the morning of May 25, 2025 — no changes were made by the user prior to this.
  • Steps already attempted:
    1. Restarted the MacBook — issue persists.
    2. Checked for updates — Nightly appears to be on the latest version.
  • The stable version of Brave is working correctly for me.
2

@wtab

For the purpose of gathering info, try:

Launch Brave Browser Nightly via the MacOS Terminal.app command line window:

open -a "Brave Browser Nightly" -n --args --incognito --disable-extensions

Alternative that will create a temporary, initialized Brave Browser user data structure within a folder named “brave-nightly-test” on your Desktop at /Users/[yourusername]/Desktop/brave-nightly-test:

open -a "Brave Browser Nightly" -n --args --incognito --disable-extensions --user-data-dir="$HOME/Desktop/brave-nightly-test"