What’s new in Brave desktop?

Brave for desktop just introduced several new options to customize the browser to your exact preferences: Themes, and toolbar.

For themes, you can choose from more than a dozen colors in light mode, dark mode, or to match your device preferences. You can also create your own custom color variations.

You can also add or remove buttons to the main toolbar in Brave. These include buttons for navigation (like home or sidebar), standard features (like password manager or bookmarks), custom features (like Leo AI or VPN), or tools and actions (like print, cast, or share).

Once you’ve added (or removed) buttons from the toolbar, you can easily drag to re-order them.

With thousands of possible combinations, anyone can make Brave truly their own. To access these new themes and toolbar options:

1. Open the desktop browser and click the main settings menu (), then click Settings.
2. Click Appearance to adjust color themes. Or, click Customize your toolbar to adjust toolbar buttons, navigation, and more.

Pro tip: From this same Appearance menu, you can also try great customization options like vertical tabs.

New desktop browser themes

Leo is Brave’s browser-native smart AI assistant. It can answer questions, analyze websites and docs, generate new content, and more. All with privacy and performance at heart.

In Brave 1.82, Leo got several great updates, including:

• Personalization: Add your name, interests, and more so Leo can personalize its answers to you. To safeguard privacy, any personal data you add will never leave your device.
• @ mention a tab: Now you can @ mention specific tabs in your browser. Leo can then reference those tabs when generating an answer.
• Easily attach docs and files: Attach docs, spreadsheets, PDFs and more for Leo to analyze in its answers.
• Gemma support: We’ve also added support for Gemma LLMs.

Brave VPN is the secure, fast VPN, built right into your browser. Brave VPN encrypts your Web traffic, no matter which app you’re using on your device. It hides your IP address, masks your location, and helps you access your favorite content no matter where you are.

In 1.82, we’ve landed two important and highly requested features: killswitch and smart proxy.

• Killswitch: The killswitch feature will automatically disconnect your device from the Web if your VPN connection drops, which can help prevent leaks of IP address or other data. Learn more.
• Smart proxy: With smart proxy, you can use Brave VPN and continue to access sites that might otherwise block traffic from known VPN servers. By routing traffic through intermediary servers, you can access content, streaming services, or sites that commonly restrict VPN access. Learn more.

The Brave browser is now easier to deploy at work, school, or other group-usage settings. Get everyone in your org browsing faster, with fewer ads and better privacy via Group Policy.

Learn more about Group Policy.