Brave 1.99.57 moved Release to Chromium 157. A quick check found no policy changes for anything SlimBrave writes, so this release follows up on what Brave changed on its servers.
Preset change
- Maximum Privacy no longer limits variations. Brave now turns on image metadata stripping for every Release user through its server-side studies, alongside WebGL/WebGPU fingerprint masking and clean-link copying. Limit Variations refused all three, which left Maximum Privacy below Brave's own defaults, so the preset now leaves variations to Brave.
- The trade-off: where Brave has moved to Chromium's HTTPS-First mode, strict HTTPS becomes a setting you can change rather than a lock.
- To freeze features between updates: tick Limit Variations or Disable Variations yourself. Both are still there.
Descriptions updated
- Limit / Disable Variations now name image metadata stripping among what they turn off, alongside WebGL/WebGPU fingerprint masking and the Google sign-in fix.
- Disable Brave News: Brave now opts some new Windows installs into News on first run. The policy still keeps the feed off, but such a profile can show a News button in the sidebar that opens an empty panel.
- Disable Local AI: now on by default in Nightly and Beta, and still off on Release.
Notes
AUDIT.mdnow listsTranslatorAPIAllowedas having no effect in Brave, because Brave 1.99 turns the Translator API off itself.AUDIT.mdalso records Brave's other server-side changes: the Windows 11 kill switch now at 100% (and without effect on Chromium 157), the ads key fetch on 1.99, and the Focus Mode study.