What’s new in Brave desktop?

Leo is the smart AI assistant built right into the browser. Now Leo can be even smarter in its responses, with Memories. The Memories feature allows Leo to remember specific facts, preferences, and information, and tailor its responses just for you. This information stays on your device, which helps ensure a more private AI experience.

To create a memory in Leo:

1. Open the desktop browser and then click the main settings menu ().
2. Click Leo, and scroll to Memories.
3. Toggle on Enable User Memory.
4. Click Add new memory, and enter some information you’d like Leo to remember. Enter as many as you like (you can edit or delete memories at any time).

Learn more about Leo customization and memories.

Enabling the Memories feature in Leo

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.

Now, Android and desktop users on version 1.84 or higher can also attach PDFs to a chat. Leo can then summarize the PDF itself; generate new content based on the PDF; or even include the PDF (along with open tabs or docs) in a larger analysis.

To attach a PDF in Leo:

1. Open Leo in Brave.
2. Click/tap the Attachment (paperclip) icon.
3. Select Upload file… and choose a file from your device.

You can already customize tab placement on Brave for desktop, moving open tabs to a vertical list on the right or left of the browser window. Now, with Brave 1.84, you can choose to hide the tab panel completely when it’s minimized, giving you more space—and less distraction—in the window.

To hide vertical tabs completely:

1. Open the desktop browser and then click the main settings menu ().
2. Click Appearance.
3. Scroll to Tabs, and make sure you’ve toggled on Use vertical tabs.
4. Click Hide completely when minimized.
5. Go to the vertical tabs panel and click the Minimize Tabs icon at the top of the tabs list.

Now, when you’re not actively hovering on the vertical tabs panel, it will disappear completely from the browser window.

Hide the vertical tabs panel on 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 a specific tab (or multiple tabs) in your browser for Leo to reference when generating an answer.
• Easily analyze docs and files: Give Leo better context by attaching PDFs and images, or linking to G Docs or Sheets open in other tabs. Leo can then include these items in its summaries and the content it generates.
• 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.