BraveDebloater is a safety-first Windows PowerShell tool for trimming Brave Browser extras while keeping Brave Shields intact.

Windows-first  ·  PowerShell-native  ·  Open source

It uses official Brave/Chromium enterprise policies where possible, starts in dry-run mode, writes backups before applying changes, and includes an undo path. No updater disabling, no host-file edits, no extension removal, and no Shield allowlisting.

What It Debloats

• Brave Rewards, Wallet, VPN, Leo AI Chat, News, Talk, Playlist, Speedreader, and Wayback prompts
• Brave telemetry surfaces such as P3A, stats ping, and Web Discovery
• Chromium metrics, URL-keyed collection, Privacy Sandbox prompts, remote search suggestions, network prediction, and remote spellcheck
• Extreme preset extras such as background mode, promotions, Browser Labs, new tab cards, shopping list, QR generator, translate prompts, autofill, and the Google search side panel

Optional profile preference cleanup can also hide some new tab sponsored/background and toolbar surfaces when Brave stores those preferences in per-profile Preferences JSON.

Quick Start

Preview the extreme preset:

.\Invoke-BraveDebloat.ps1 -Preset Extreme

List the policies and optional profile preference patches without running the dry-run/apply flow:

.\Invoke-BraveDebloat.ps1 -Preset Extreme -List -IncludeProfilePreferences

List the available feature toggles:

.\Invoke-BraveDebloat.ps1 -ListFeatures

Run a read-only health check of Brave policies, backups, profile files, and detected feature status:

.\Invoke-BraveDebloat.ps1 -Doctor

Apply it for the current Windows user:

.\Invoke-BraveDebloat.ps1 -Preset Extreme -Apply

Apply it and enforce a safe Shields baseline:

.\Invoke-BraveDebloat.ps1 -Preset Extreme -LockShields -Apply

Customize the preset interactively:

.\Invoke-BraveDebloat.ps1 -Preset Extreme -Customize

Or make a scripted custom run:

.\Invoke-BraveDebloat.ps1 -Preset Extreme -ExcludeFeature News,LeoAI
.\Invoke-BraveDebloat.ps1 -Preset Standard -IncludeFeature Translate
.\Invoke-BraveDebloat.ps1 -OnlyFeature Rewards,Wallet,VPN

PowerShell -WhatIf is supported as a no-write preview even when -Apply is present:

.\Invoke-BraveDebloat.ps1 -Preset Extreme -Apply -WhatIf

After applying, restart Brave and open brave://policy to verify the policies.

Presets

• Standard: Brave-specific bloat and Brave telemetry.
• High: Standard plus privacy-preserving policy defaults.
• Extreme: High plus more UI and convenience surface cleanup.
• Core, Privacy, and Aggressive: compatibility aliases for Standard, High, and Extreme.
• -LockShields: optional add-on that enforces default ad blocking, standard fingerprinting protection, HTTPS upgrades, and stricter referrer behavior.

By default, the tool uses Extreme and does not lock Shield behavior. It also refuses to apply policies that disable Shields, add Shield-disabled URLs, weaken Safe Browsing, or disable updates.

Feature Toggles

Use -Customize for an interactive yes/no prompt for each cleanup, or use -IncludeFeature and -ExcludeFeature for repeatable commands. Feature names are shown by -ListFeatures; examples include Rewards, Wallet, VPN, LeoAI, News, Talk, Autofill, Translate, and GoogleSearchSidePanel.

Use -OnlyFeature when you want exactly the named cleanups without starting from a preset.

When -IncludeProfilePreferences is combined with custom feature choices, profile preference patches are filtered to the selected features.

Doctor Mode

Use -Doctor to inspect the current Brave policy state without writing anything. It reports CurrentUser and LocalMachine policy keys, detected feature status, unknown Brave policies, protected policy names, Brave process state, profile preference files, and available backups.

This is useful after testing other debloat tools because machine-wide policies can make Brave settings appear managed for every Windows user.

Profile Preferences

Registry policies are the main path because they are supported and visible in brave://policy. For cosmetic cleanup that Brave stores per profile, close Brave and run:

.\Invoke-BraveDebloat.ps1 -Preset Extreme -IncludeProfilePreferences -Apply

If Brave is running, profile preference cleanup is skipped to avoid writing files that Brave may overwrite.

Restore

Every applied run creates a JSON backup in backups/ unless -NoBackup is used for policy-only changes.

Preview a restore:

.\Invoke-BraveDebloat.ps1 -UndoFromBackup .\backups\BraveDebloater-YYYYMMDD-HHMMSS-fff.json

Apply a restore:

.\Invoke-BraveDebloat.ps1 -UndoFromBackup .\backups\BraveDebloater-YYYYMMDD-HHMMSS-fff.json -Apply

Restore validates backup metadata before writing. Registry restores are limited to Brave policy keys, and profile file restores are limited to Preferences files under the selected -ProfileRoot.

Machine-Wide Mode

Current-user policy is the default and does not require administrator rights. For machine-wide policy, run PowerShell as administrator:

.\Invoke-BraveDebloat.ps1 -Preset Extreme -Scope LocalMachine -Apply

Sources

Policy names and values are based on Brave's official Group Policy documentation and Brave policy templates:

• https://support.brave.app/hc/en-us/articles/360039248271-Group-Policy
• https://brave-browser-downloads.s3.brave.com/latest/policy_templates.zip

Project Checks

Run the built-in manifest and syntax checks:

.\scripts\Test-PolicyManifest.ps1
.\scripts\Test-Behavior.ps1

Pull Request Review

Greptile review guidance lives in greptile.json and mirrors the same safety-first focus for PowerShell compatibility, policy changes, registry writes, profile JSON writes, and feature-toggle behavior.