Freezing browser whilst using VR

Browser Support
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Description of the issue: The browser freezes whilst using Brave on VR, this is done in two ways.

Steps to Reproduce:

The first way:

  1. Exit Fullscreen while watching a video, could be on YouTube.

The second way:

  1. Scroll via hold and drag (although this one is rarer to occur from my experience).

Actual Result: Browser freezes, then browser loses audio shortly after and I am forced to kill process (this is for both ways).

Expected result: Either I exit Fullscreen with no issues or I scroll with no issues.

Reproduces how often: Chances are random.

Operating System and Brave Version:

Brave Version: 1.84.139

Windows 11 Version: 25H2

Meta Quest 2 via Steam Link (SteamVR 2.13)

Additional Information: I use OVR Toolkit (as of 13/11/2025, I am using the latest version of OVR Toolkit as they don’t show their version numbers :/) to display my desktop and Brave.

3

That is unknown sadly.

5

You could try to reproduce the bug on a Chromium browser, but you would need the equipment and software I used.

7

No problem, this issue is quite niche.

8

Yeah this may just be due to the device you’re using and the fact that you’re using a software that wasn’t planned/tested for to get the browser to display in the headset. It’s resourceful and cool that it works for sure, but hard to plan for.

Have you tried disabling Graphics acceleration in the browser? Settings --> System --> Use graphics acceleration[...]

I’ll ask a couple devs if they have any suggestions and to perhaps consider including VR (or the use of it) for future releases.

1 Like
9

I have disabled ‘Graphics Acceleration’, I will report back on whether I works or not when I can.

1 Like
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Apologies for the long wait, I have had no improvement since disabling ‘Graphics Acceleration’.

11

Thanks for testing.
Can you just test if disabling Shields for YT has any effect? Outside of that again, I don’t have a ton of experience with VR in general, let alone as it relates to browser behavior. Will ping internally again to see if I can get someone else’s eyes on it.

12

Disabling shields for YT wouldn’t make a difference as it affects the browser in general and not specific websites.

I did have this happen once outside of VR where my browser froze, I can only assume that this happened when I was moving very quickly between browser tabs.

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Can you please try this and tell me if it makes any difference? Thank you.

14

@Mattches while I initially didn’t notice this, their post might be again in regards to the YouTube browser freeze situation I was complaining about in other threads.

Notice this part:

Browser freezes, then browser loses audio shortly after and I am forced to kill process (this is for both ways).

That’s the exact breakdown, the video freezes, then audio stops. Except in their situation they aren’t in windowed mode and can “drag a window” to unfreeze it.

While us other users with this issue don’t run into the problem while in Full Screen, this user is using VR, altering things slightly, so maybe in VR that very same freeze can happen in fullscreen instead of just a window?

Just a thought I realized when looking closer at their issue. The other part they said is this:

  1. Scroll via hold and drag (although this one is rarer to occur from my experience).

I bring this one to front because I almost forgot, in one of the posts I did mention it seemed to happen when I was scrolling, especially “auto-scroll” (like middle mouse button scrolling). This sounds a bit related, though they said the scrolling was rarer to happen.

I wonder, as I posted on GitHub, everyone with this “freezing” issue, should we start dumping brave://gpu? I think this needs to be determine if there’s any common factors at play (CPU, OS version/build, just something?).

(Likewise, they too stated turning off Graphics Acceleration didn’t help. Just today while helping that other user I did mention it seemed I had one lockup while Graphics Accel was off as well, so another thing that matches this users problem.)