Is there a way to disable "set as default browser" prompts before launching Brave?

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1

The question I have doesn’t quite fit the issue template…

I’m a developer for the Kicksecure project (basically we make a hardened Debian derivative), and we’re offering Brave as a browser users can install via an application we’ve created called “Browser Choice”. Since we’re presenting it to users in our own applications for them to install if they want to, we want to make sure Brave actually works well with Kicksecure so users have a good experience.

Brave currently requests to be made the default browser when you first start it (in the “Welcome to Brave” screen), and then occasionally requests to be made the default browser again via an infobar. Whereas most users are fine with being able to dismiss these notifications (or accept Brave as the default browser), this does not work so well in Kicksecure. Setting any browser as the default browser actually breaks an important feature of Kicksecure, “open-link-confirmation”, which asks the user if they really want to open a link they’ve clicked before opening it. open-link-confirmation is the “default browser”, and it then has its own browser prioritization mechanism for launching the “real” default browser.

In order to keep users from accidentally breaking open-link-confirmation, we would like to configure Brave (and all the other browsers we offer) to never request to be made the default browser, not even once. Thus, I’m attempting to create configuration snippets for each browser that will disable “set as default browser” prompts before the user launches the browser for the first time. Unfortunately, I’m having a heck of a time getting a working configuration snippet for Brave.

Description of the issue:
How can this issue be reproduced?

  1. Install Brave Browser using the .deb file provided by Brave Software.

  2. Before launching Brave, create a file at $HOME/.config/BraveSoftware/Brave-Browser/Default/Preferences with the following contents:

  3. {
    "brave": {
        "default_browser_prompt_enabled": false
    },
    "browser": {
        "default_browser_setting_enabled": false
    }
}

  4. Save the file, then open Brave.

Expected result: The “Set as default browser” button should not be shown on the initial welcome screen, and the “Brave isn’t your default browser” infobar should never appear when launching Brave subsequent times.

Brave Version( check About Brave): Brave 1.81.135 (Official Build) (64-bit), Chromium: 139.0.7258.127

Additional Information: When inspecting the Preferences file after closing Brave after following the above steps, default_browser_prompt_enabled seems to be set to false, but in brave://local-state, it shows as being set to true. I also tried setting ”default_browser_infobar_declined_count”: 9999 as suggested in this post, which seemed to have no effect on either the welcome page or the infobar. I can see other default_browser settings in brave://local-state, but I’m not sure which ones are useful or not.

Right now I’m just trying to get this configuration to work on a per-user level. I can figure the rest out after that.

2

@ArrayBolt3

Take a look at:

https://support.brave.app/hc/en-us/articles/360039248271-Group-Policy

THERE, scroll down to info re Linux OS.

Other info:

3

Thanks for the suggestion. I am specifically working with Brave on Linux, so I don’t think Microsoft’s Group Policy system will help me much. I did look through the files anyway to see if they would give me setting names that might help, and discovered PromotionalTabsEnabled which (assuming it corresponds to a Brave setting) might allow me to disable the welcome screen. I’d sort of like being able to disable just the default browser button rather than the entire welcome screen, but it would at least let me solve half the problem. The only other default browser setting I found looking through that was DefaultBrowserSettingEnabled, which I tried setting via Brave’s preferences file to no avail.

Edit: I see the Linux-related info now, will try that out. Thank you!

4

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