On other browsers, if you open a new tab, the background image loads near instantly. Chrome is the slowest but still much faster than Brave, and Firefox is very fast and sometimes instant, and Vivaldi is the best and absolutely instantantaneous.
On Brave, there’s like a 300ms grey background before the image loads which is super distracting. This is the main thing holding me back from daily driving Brave as it’s important imo that the new tab experience doesn’t feel sluggish.
Hello,
While the new-tab experience isn’t “sluggish”, I will note that there is a black flash when opening a new tab. I believe that’s part of the image’s loading design.
Optionally, you can use a new tab extension like Bonjourr, Renewed Tab or Home Sweet Home to customise your new tab page. Please note however that you’ll be unable to see your Rewards stats or Brave Shields stats if you use those features.
I’m not seeing this on macOS, Windows 11 or Linux builds. NTP images load instantly. Do you have any extensions installed in the browser at this time
Here’s a video demo of what I think you mean…
Firefox is a bit faster as you can see:
I recorded it for myself to show the contrast but it says new users cannot upload attachments.
The contrast between Brave and other browsers is insanely noticeable, though only with custom images - it looks a lot faster with the random images. Kind of nuts how you can’t select only a single or choose from the default images though, all the other browsers I checked can do that as well.
You can use storage.to to upload large video files if you like.
There’s no fix for this besides using a custom new tab page, and I doubt Brave will fix this.
Here: https://storage.to/c/IaSk3h5N1 The difference is insane.
Since this site still won’t let me just upload the vides for some reason.
Video 1:
Video 2:
While I do see the difference I don’t think it’s “insanely different”. Further it might be an issue with Chromium as Chrome appears to have the same load time. Further, the first video you shared I barely noticed any difference at all.
In the second one (where you used the moon background) the difference was more apparent. I’m assuming this is a custom background image you’re using?
I see a very clear difference between the videos, thanks for the visual demo.
This is similar to what I see.
Personal notations:
Proposal:
Brave should consider adding the option to accelerate the loading time of their NTP images to improve user experience and accessibility needs, even if it’s located within brave://flags.
Brave could add a flag like “New Tab Page Image Loading Delay”, with dropdown options like 0ms, 100ms, 200ms,… 500ms.
Quick visual mock-up using Brave’s Devtools:
@Kwan can you please change the category to a feature request if you wish for all Desktop OSs (Win, Mac, Linux)?
I’ll add that on high-refresh displays (144hz, 165hz), the difference become clearer. That’s why I typically change my Brave background image to a 3rd party extension. I agree with this user, and that’s why I use an alternate NTP.
Realistically, the average user isn’t going to spam open new tabs, but for demonstration, repetition is useful to see a trend appear.
Yeah I tested the custom background on all browsers so one video is the comparison between custom backgrounds and one with the included backgrounds. Okay, I might be slightly exagerrating, but the difference for Brave is pretty noticeable. I’m sure I’m a bit nitpicky but this is honestly the biggest thing stopping me from daily driving the browser since I just find it super distracting and I open new tabs a lot. It’s basically just a flash every time you open a new tab.
Chrome might look similar but I find it a lot less distracting since it has that fade in effect, and I can’t quite tell if the load time is the same - I still think it’s closer to Firefox than Brave because I feel I can’t see the plain background before the fade in. Also note Vivaldi is Chromium too and has absolutely zero load time for the background which looks really sleek in my opinion.
I was recording it on a 300Hz monitor but having tested it on my 60Hz secondary monitor it looks the same.
Does this still happen if you have the browser set to show Brave’s background images rather than a custom one?
You can tell the answer to that from the videos that were sent. The brave backgrounds aren’t as fast to load as I’d like but it’s definitely much faster than loading the custom image, there’s no reason why it should be any different though.
