12 MACWORLD APRIL 2020
MACUSER FIVE SAFARI ALTERNATIVESBrave aggressively blocks ads and trackers, and builds its own ad-based
web economy instead.Brave has an iOS app (go.macworld.
com/brio) loaded with privacy features
(HTTPS everywhere, script and tracker
blocking, pop-up blocking...). And there’s a
nice bookmarks syncing feature that
doesn’t even require you to make an
account and log in. Unfortunately, the sync
function only currently supports
bookmarks—not open tabs, history,
passwords, autofill, or your BAT earnings.
Even if you don’t care about BAT, you’ll
find Brave to be a very fast Chrome-like
browser that puts a very high priority on
privacy and security. It just needs a more
robust sync system. ■brev). It has rather
extensive built-in
ad blocking and
tracker blocking.
This greatly
speeds up page
loading, but it can
sometimes break
websites and, of
course, it robs
them of revenue.
It’s easy to turn
“shields down”
for a site if you
need to.
Brave can
show you its own
ads as notification
pop-ups, for which
you’ll earn a currency called BAT (Basic
Attention Tokens). You’ll also earn them at
a lower rate just for browsing the web.
These tokens are then used to pay out
participating sites and to pay you, the user.
You can turn them in for real money, or to
tip websites or content creators.
It’s a novel idea, but it’s a little annoying
to sign up for the whole Brave Rewards
program, and even more annoying to link
the account with the third-party Uphold
service in order to actually turn BAT into
money. And it’s useless to any website or
creator that doesn’t similarly sign up to be
a part of the revolution.