Transcript of Make Brave Browser Private in 5 Minutes (2025 Privacy Guide)

Hey everyone, Andrew here and welcome back to the channel. So, you've downloaded Brave because you heard it's the privacy browser. Well, kind of. Brave is good out of the box. It's better than Chrome for sure, but it still shares some data and a few default settings aren't exactly Ninja level private. So, in this video, I'll show you how to make Brave truly private in about 5 minutes step by step. I'll explain why each change matters before we do it so you know what's happening, not just blindly clicking buttons. All right, get the coffee ready and let's lock down Brave. Step one, we're going to turn off telemetry. So, before we start, telemetry just means sending usage data back to Brave. It's meant to help developers, but it's still tracking even if it's harmless. So, we're going to switch it off. So, to do this, you want to open up Brave. And from here you want to go to the hamburger menu in the top right hand corner and scroll down to settings. And from here you want to go over to the left hand side and select privacy and security. And from here we want to scroll down to data collection. So you've got allow privacy preserving product analytics. We're going to turn that off. Automatically send daily usage ping to Brave. We'll turn that off as well. And automatically send diagnostic reports. We're going to turn that off as well. Now Brave won't ping home every time something weird happens. You just saved yourself from some background data chatter. Step number two, we're going to turn off improve search suggestions. Uh before we start, when you type in the address bar, Brave can send what you type to its search engine to improve suggestions. That means part of your search might leave the browser before you hit enter. So we're going to fix that now. So, open up Brave again and then go to the hamburger menu in the top right and you want to scroll down to settings and over at the left hand side you want to select search engine and then you will see improve search suggestions. We want to disable this. Now Brave won't leak your keystrokes while you type. Step number three, we're going to max out the shields. Uh before we start, Brave Shields are your built-in ad and tracker blocker. So we're going to tweak the global default so every state site starts private. No extra clicking required. So to do this, you want to open up Brave and then you want to go up to the little line up here and you want to select this. Go to advanced controls and scroll down to global defaults. So some settings in here we just want to adjust. So first off, trackers and ad blocking. That's set to standard. So, we're going to change that to aggressive. That would be the strongest protection. Removes most tracking scripts. Next, we have upgrade connections to HTTPS. That's set to standard. I'm going to change that to strict. Uh, forces secure versions of websites. Block scripts is off by default, and I'm going to leave it that way because turning it on can break some sites. So, use per site only. Next up, we've got block fingerprinting. Uh masks device details sites used to identify you. So, we want to keep that enabled. Uh block third party cookies. Uh we want to make sure that's on. It stops cross-sight tracking cookies. And then forget me when I close this site. This is optional if you want to uh autodelete cookies. Clears cookies per site on close. Uh, so now Brave blocks ads and trackers, upgrades insecure connections, limits fingerprinting, and rejects third-party cookies all automatically. Step number four, we're going to pick a private default search. Uh, before we start, your searches reveal a lot about you. Let's pick a search engine that respects privacy. So, to do this, we're going to open up Brave, up to the hamburger menu, and then down to settings. And over on the left hand side, you want to select search engine. Now, we're going to change the normal window, search engine used, and address bar. We're going to change this. Well, you'd want to change it to you could change it to Brave, do go or start page. Uh, you know, not Google anyway. So, uh, we will go with start page and then set as default. And in a private window, search engine used in the address bar for private windows. We're going to change this And I'm also going to select star page and set as default. Now if we want to manage search engines and it's site search, we can uh select uh manage search engine and site search. And if we want to remove Google, we can remove it from here. Uh and select delete. And same with Bing, you can uh delete also. So now your searches stay private. No profiling, no ad logs, just results. And step five, we're going to autoclear cookies and cache on exit. So before we start, websites still leave cookies and cached files that track you. So we'll make Brave clean up every time you close it. So to do this, you want to open up Brave and we want to go up to the hamburger menu again and scroll down to settings. And from here, we want to select privacy and security over at the left hand side. And then we want to select delete browsing data. And then you want to go to onexit. And from here I am going to select cookies and other site data cached images and files and optional but you could add your browsing history uh if you want a fresh start each session and then select save. Uh brave now takes out the trash automatically. And just one more thing I want to point out to turn off Brave Rewards. Um, Brave Rewards show ads for crypto tokens. Uh, if you want zero ad systems, de disable it. And to do that, you would go to the hamburger menu again and down to settings and then select rewards. Um, turn on Brave Rewards. Mine's off by Mine's off by default. If yours is on, you can uh turn it off. It's a cleaner experience. Um, fewer pop-ups, no background, uh, ad system, just pure browsing. All right, and that's it. Uh, your Brave browser is now truly private. So, a quick recap. Uh, telemetry off, improved search suggestions off, shields maxed, private search engine set, autoclear enabled, and rewards off. Uh, if this helped you at all, please give it a thumbs up uh so people can lock down their browser and subscribe for more no drama privacy guides. Um, thanks for watching and stay private and I'll see you in the next one. Bye for not.