Yeah so this is definitely why it’s behind a flag, as we’re still working out the bugs.
That said, the default value was Enabled so if you had wanted to use it, you could have just right-clicked on the browser window and selected Focus mode from the context menu.
As unfortunate it is given that you were doing the right thing in trying to troubleshoot and solve your issue, by deleting your browser settings you…well…you deleted your browser settings. This is expected to happen.
For any future issues introduced by flags where the browser won’t launch and/or crashes, you should instead try launching the browser from the command line/terminal with that flag disabled. So in this specific instance, you would have opened the Windows Command Prompt (or PowerShell) and entered:
I’m to blame for the impatience and uninstalling. I didn’t know how fast you all are at responses to issues. Tried replying to the x.com post (I know, not a place to report bugs, but it was within minutes of the post going up and thought there might be feedback).
I should have considered the command line option. Brain dulled by reliance on GUIs for too long.
While I have your ear, here are some comments on Focus Mode and more.
The only place in the browser I didn’t right click was in the vertical tab bar. Focus Mode doesn’t appear anywhere else (you might consider making it more accessible- toolbar etc…). It also doesn’t appear when you search Settings, searching Shortcuts would have got me there but they aren’t searchable from the higher level Settings search. Hence why I went to Flags toggle it.
2a) Since I mentioned it… Really would be nice to see Shortcuts pop up as a group in Settings search.
2b) It is confusing when searching for “keyboard” or “shortcuts” from Settings search that it leads you to extensions keyboard shortcuts.
Focus Mode hides sidebars, doesn’t hide bookmarks/tab groups bar if I have those turned on. I suggest lumping those together if possible.
Fair point – that said, I believe we do plan to have some UI/settings implemented when the feature is released so that the option is more visible. I can double check and confirm that.
This does appear to be a bug – however, interestingly the bug does not occur in Nightly specifically. Only in Beta and Stable. I’ve opened an issue for the devs to review in case it needs to be addressed here: https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/issues/59089
That said, in Nightly (1.97.37), searching for Shortcuts works as intended:
It hides the entire top “chrome” of the browser, which includes the address bar, toolbar, bookmarks bar and tab groups, so it does lump it in. If you want those to not appear when you hover to the top of the screen to reveal that area, you’ll have to toggle those optiosn off, or use the Ctrl + Shift + B keyboard shortcut.
