"Focus Menu Bar" Shortcut Persisting After Deletion

Brave Browser Desktop Support
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1

Description of the issue:
When Alt key is removed from the Focus menu bar shortcut, and Brave is exited and reopened, then the Alt key is added back to the Focus menu bar shortcut list.

Steps to Reproduce:

  1. Go to Menu > System > Shortcuts > Search “Focus menu bar”
  2. Remove Alt from the list of shortcuts for “Focus menu bar”
    2.1. (Optional): Check if the shortcut is applied, by pressing Alt while not focused on any item (i.e. search bar)
  3. Exit (Menu > Exit)
  4. Open Brave
  5. Press Alt, while not focused on any item (i.e. a bookmark or search bar)
    5.1. (Optional): Press Enter to open the menu bar

Actual Result (gifs and screenshots are welcome!):
After Step 5, the menu bar is focused on, resulting in a faint highlight of the “hamburger” on the top right. Pressing Enter results in the menu bar opening.

Expected result:
After Step 5, nothing happens. Specifically, that the menu bar is not focused on, and does not open when pressing Enter.

Reproduces how often:
Currently, on the reporter’s machine, reproduces 100% of the time, after 10 tests.

Brave Version(about:brave):
Version 1.71.114 Chromium: 130.0.6723.58 (Official Build) (64-bit)

Reproducible on current live release (yes/no):
Yes

Additional Information:
Uncertain as to whether this is a bug or expected behavior, as other default shortcuts, i.e. Alt-M and F10 stay removed when removed. Alt is the only shortcut for Focus menu bar that persists after removal.

2

Since there appear to be no solutions, I would like to ask for an alternative method to rebind the Alt key. It appears that Shortcuts cannot only be the Alt key if not default, at least, through the Shortcut menu.

Is there an alternative way to assign keyboard Shortcuts that permit for Alt to be a shortcut?

3

A small update:

I’ve discovered that the default preferences for the Shortcuts automatically changes on shutdown and bootup for Brave.

On Windows, the Preferences file is: C:\Users\user_name\AppData\Local\BraveSoftware\Brave-Browser\User Data\Default\Preferences.

The specific occurences of automatic updates that are of interest are the two unique instances of Shortcut “Focus Home,” named “39003,” which continually reset to having either of the following arrays as the list for acceptable keybindings:

  1. ["F10","AltGr","Alt"]
  2. ["F10","Alt","Alt","AltGr"] (curiously, "Alt" is repeated twice)

The file (Preferences) reverts on-shutdown or on-bootup, though not while Brave is shutdown or running.

An appreciated piece of information would be what script updates the default preferences; where the file that modifies this one can be found.

Alternatively, a script that can automatically detect these specific changes to this file and revert them would also be appreciated.