It’s 2026 and I have seen this issue discussed in the past and it still exists.
After unchecking the box to Upgrade connections to HTTPS, the Brave Browser still forces all connections to https. Even in a private window. I have tried to clear everything, quit and restart. Frustrating.
Please do not lecture on the use of HTTPS vs HTTP. It’s not relevant.
Any work arounds or solutions?
The option to “Upgrade connection to HTTPS” exists to Disable this feature, right? So why does this option simply do nothing at all when I Disable HTTPs auto-upgrades, “Delete domain security policies” at brave://net-internals/#hsts, quit the browser, and restart. This option is simply broken and does nothing when you Disable it.
For the record, in Firefox, this works fine and I can visit my local http://dashboard.home without SSL warnings. But in Brave, I am permanently issued warnings for SSL certificates and I don’t want to import certificates for all my local services.
I think it’s probably the way that Chromium is designed, in that it gives you HTTPS warnings, even if it doesn’t upgrade. I know it’s inconvenient, but just ignore them. It’s not necessarily a bug, as you have labelled.
Sorry for the inconvenience! If you want, you can change your OP (original post) to a feature request, and your feature (Never give HTTP warnings) may be discussed among the Brave team.
