Troubleshooting technical issues is much easier when both the user and support agent practice clear communication. For this reason, we have provided the template below for you to fill out with information about your issue. Please provide as much detail as possible so we can most efficiently resolve your problem.
Description of the issue: Recently (not sure which version it changed, but the past couple weeks), Brave has been using 0.3%-0.5% battery per hour when sitting in the background (not closed, but minimized and inactive in the background). I can force stop and clear cache, and it doesn’t drain battery anymore. But something is clearly happening that it didn’t used to on older versions.
How can this issue be reproduced?
Leave Brave Browser minimized/idle/not closed in the background (with any number of tabs – can be 1, can be 10, can be a static website)
Check battery usage after a few hours (even overnight)
Brave uses 0.3%-0.5% per hour battery with “less than 1 min on screen”, despite being in the background and not opened/used
Expected result: Little to no battery use like previous versions
Brave Version( check About Brave): 1.85.117
Mobile Device details: Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra, Android 16, fully updated. Here is a random screenshot of 6am when I was asleep.
Additional Information: Battery setting is set to Unrestricted, and has been for a while (however long the “Brave reloads pages when you minimize it then come back” problem has existed), to try and minimize that issue. Do I need to put it back to Optimized?
As an update, it was a much more recent issue than I thought. I only found it started doing this, based on the battery usage tracker, on the 1st. So this is an issue that may be somehow tied to the new year/2026?
Chromium background processes: Brave is built on Chromium and runs multiple processes for GPU, networking, storage, and site isolation even when no page is actively visible; these can keep small but constant CPU and wake‑lock activity going. reddit
Background tasks and disk I/O: On both Android and iOS there are reports of Brave doing notable background work (e.g., disk writes, internal maintenance, sync, statistics, rewards, filters updates), which can prevent the device from going into deeper sleep states and cause battery drain that looks disproportionate to “screen on” time.
Version‑specific regressions: Multiple users note that older Brave builds used “little to no battery” when idle and that higher background drain began after certain updates, suggesting regressions or changed defaults rather than just your configuration.
Things you can try
Disable or reduce features that may run in the background:
Brave Rewards, playlist, crypto‑related services, and aggressive ad/tracker lists updates.
Any extensions, especially those that do live filtering, script injection, or periodic checks. github
Change background and system settings:
On desktop, turn off “Continue running background apps when browser is closed” in Brave’s System settings (if available on your platform). youtube
On Android, keep “put app to sleep / restrict background activity” enabled for Brave; note that some users still see background usage even with this set, but it can reduce it. brave
Test cleanly:
Temporarily create a fresh Brave profile with no extensions, open just one simple static page, then leave the device idle overnight and compare battery drain to another browser under the same conditions.
If the drain started after a specific update, check Brave Beta or Nightly vs Stable to see if the issue is already being worked on. github
On Android there is no single Brave toggle that completely guarantees “never run in background”, but you can greatly reduce or effectively stop its background activity using a mix of Brave settings and Android battery controls.
In Brave settings
Use these steps inside Brave (names can vary slightly by version and OEM skin):
Open Brave → tap the three‑dot menu → Settings.
Turn off features that are allowed to run when the app is not on screen:
Under Media (or similar), disable background play / background audio.
Turn off Brave Rewards, Brave Wallet, and any crypto or news feeds you do not use.
Disable site notification permissions you do not need (push notifications can wake the app).
These reduce reasons for Brave to wake in the background, though they may not stop it entirely.
Android battery / background limits
Android’s own app controls are the strongest way to stop Brave staying alive:
Go to Android Settings → Apps → Brave → Battery.
Choose “Restricted” or the most aggressive background limit offered by your phone (Samsung, Xiaomi, etc., may word this differently). brave
Also open Settings → “Battery” or “Device care” → “Background usage limits” (or “Sleeping apps”) and place Brave into the deepest sleep / restricted list, if available.
Users report that even when Brave is put to sleep it can sometimes still show long “running in background” times, so this is partly device/Brave‑version dependent.
When Brave still shows as running
Some users on recent Samsung and other Android devices note that:
Brave keeps appearing in battery stats as “running in background” for many hours even with background restricted and notifications off.
Force‑closing Brave from the Android “App info” screen reliably stops this until the next time you open it. brave
If you want the strictest behavior, get used to force‑closing Brave from App info after use, or via the recent‑apps view using the “App info → Force stop” path. brave
Trade‑offs to expect
Aggressive background restriction can stop downloads, media playback, and long‑running web apps (messengers, calls) from working when the screen is off.
If something you rely on breaks (e.g., downloads stop when the screen turns off), loosen the restriction for Brave slightly under the Battery/App management page. reddit
It may be too soon, but after having changed the battery mode from Unrestricted to Optimized on Brave, it seems to not be taking battery while idle anymore. I’ll monitor over the next couple days and confirm for sure.
In general, Brave wants to stay open in the background simply for website based push notifications. Setting to optimize, especially if you don’t use push notifications in your browser (like myself), generally Brave will eventually be closed down because it’s idling doing nothing.
Stuff like browsers are ok to set Optimized. About the things you don’t want to “Optimize” are apps you actually expect to receive notifications from, as it causes delayed notifications (or none at all until the app is opened manually).
I think you may be thinking of the battery setting of Restricted – not Optimized? Restricted (3rd option) would prevent notifications, not Optimized (middle option). Oddly, even after all night, my tabs did not reload when I woke up (after sitting all night idle/minimized), which it still used to do under Unrestricted mode (first option). That’s why I even changed that setting in the first place, so if this helps in that respect as well, I’ll be happy!
No, optimized is more like an auto-restricted, it kicks in, and kicks out. Restricted remains in place.
The reason Optimized can delay notifications is honestly quite simple (and I don’t confuse these things, I’ve been working in Android since KitKat and modding my phones with AOSP and custom ROMs).
Optimized lets the phone decide if an app hasn’t done anything for a while in the background, and close it itself. This will cause situations where when you open the app and the notifications come back, but you’ll then also notice, when you close it, notifications work just fine, until you don’t get one for say, 8 hours (random number), then it ends up closing again. Restricted is just a “this app is always forced closed”.
Now, every phone make/model tends to customize this which is why I gave a random number for the time, because in AOSP it’s one thing, we don’t even get to select which apps are optimized or not, ONLY when prompted to optimize as that’s how real base Android actually works. Most phone vendors let you access a list to change yourself, but that’s not actually a feature of Android (shockingly, not sure why? it should be), but they also change the behavior of optimized to how the vendor wishes to optimize (different battery configuration may demand different optimization methods).
This is where Android isn’t unified at all. Because Optimize simply works differently between vendors, but I didn’t confuse it for restricted. I just understand under the hood how it truly operates and it’s firing orders, lol.
I was pretty heavily into modding my phones back when I had my Galaxy S4 (started with Jelly Bean) and S6 – before Samsung decided to lock down their bootloaders. Was fun playing around with performance governors and every little setting, squeezing every little ounce of performance out of them. But it’s been like what, 7 years since I was able to do that? Annoying…
But yeah, I’m just finding it crazy that on Unrestricted on a phone with 12GB RAM and only a couple apps open, my tabs reload almost every time I go back to Brave. But lately with Optimized, it hasn’t NEARLY as much. I don’t do notifications from Brave anyways.
A lot has changed, but one thing that hadn’t, was PlayIntegrity which is where a lot of this “pain” came from, or whatever the last iteration was before PlayIntegrity and “verified boot states”. Shockingly, just somehow on a custom AOSP ROM, I was allowed to install and properly use Netflix. Even my banking app works. The ones that didn’t? Oddly ChatGPT and CashApp. Those fail PlayIntegrity somehow, yet my banks didn’t and neither Netflix?
I won’t complain. We all know that shouldn’t be possible. Somehow some apps think integrity is good while others don’t. I never rooted it, it’s a plain simple LineageOS 23 nightly install, with user_debug too. Again, shouldn’t be possible yet it…did.
Full agree. My phone only has 4GB of RAM, so I make do (somehow I have zero issues on Android 16 with 4GB of RAM when I only see 870MB at best “free”), and ironically, not everything closes down if Battery Manager is left.
I think however this setting doesn’t even care nor check how much RAM you have, because I think it’s strictly for reducing background app usage on the battery itself, not if you need RAM available.
(Btw the first phone Android I had was a Note 3, back when you know, if you messed up you had Odin, and well, before “slots”. I got caught by “slots” when I tried to mod my Moto G Power a few years back. I never knew “slots” became a thing and well, let’s just say I managed to write to another slot, erase the “selected” slot, and um…the phone never turned on again, couldn’t even get the Qualcom EDL mode to activate, it was hard bricked. I had my OnePlus for 4 years before I decided to mod it because I truly needed the security patches since the phone’s battery was still effectively lasting 3-4 days without needing a charge, and it wasn’t even slow on 4GB of RAM either, it just lost official support.)
Yep, and I messed up plenty of times back then, but it was just a simple reflash of the correct files in Odin back then. Haven’t bothered since, especially since Samsung has gotten a LOT better with the bloat they include (or don’t, in this case). Either way, since that 7+ years, I scratch my itch with Raspberry Pis and such.
Back to the actual issue at hand, it definitely seems to be working normally (at least MORE normally – like before the 1st) with the change to Optimized. I’ve attached an example of the Brave battery usage on the 2nd and today (so far, but at least the morning/sleep usage was done). Notice the massive difference in background usage. Also, tabs are still not reloading like they used to when minimized (or even just switching between tabs while still open), so that’s a bonus.
We all know that shouldn’t be possible. Somehow some apps think integrity is good while others don’t. I never rooted it, it’s a plain simple LineageOS 23 nightly install, with user_debug too. Again, shouldn’t be possible yet it…did.
