Hello! Just wanted to drop in and provide some sort of “official” response here, as it’s been quite a while since anyone from the team has responded here and this specific request is brought up quite frequently.
Interestingly enough, half the work is already done for me, as @erebus really hit the nail on the head here:
This is more or less a great summary of why this hasn’t been implemented yet. We have explored adding extensions into Brave on Android and what it would take to implement. And while the actual implementation in and of itself isn’t a blocker, the main issue here is the upkeep. It would require a non-trivial amount of work in order to patch these additions for every update as well as every Chromium bump.
Lastly, while we may have a larger team than some other browsers (Kiwi seems to be the top example here), that does not grant us unlimited time/resources. The release cycle can be difficult/time consuming as is with all the existing changes we’ve implemented that need to be patched, security considerations, Chromium changes, project deadlines, bug fixes, etc. It is not as simple as “implement extension support, push it to release then move onto the next thing” — it requires consistent management, testing and [potential] code changes every month just to maintain it.
So at this time, there is no work currently planned to support extensions on Android. That said, it does not mean that it will never happen. I (personally) believe that we should work to push new features/additions to the browser that users show strong demand for and will continue to advocate for these features to the team on their (your) behalf, but I’m not blind to the other side of this equation.
I encourage you all to respectfully continue to voice your desire for this and other features you want to see in Brave on any platform, while simultaneously requesting your patience and understanding of our teams bandwidth, limitations and expectations.