# how to install and set up Brave browser. Ads blocked by default.

By Mason Loomis (@MasonLoomis) · Published Oct 4, 2026 · 9:54

- Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2RIFNhsWTqs
- Page: https://masonloomis.com/videos/how-to-install-and-set-up-brave-browser/

> How I install and set up Brave, the Chromium-based browser that blocks ads by default: winget, default-browser settings, a cleaner new tab page and Leo AI.

## Summary

Brave is a Chromium-based browser, so anything that works in Chrome works in Brave, and its Shields block ads and trackers by default. Mason has used it as his everyday browser for four or five years. In this walkthrough he uninstalls it from a Windows virtual machine and sets it up from scratch.

He covers three ways to install it: the download from brave.com, the Microsoft Store, or winget, the command-line package manager built into Windows, using winget.run to find the official Brave.Brave package and copy its install command. On first run he makes Brave the default browser (Windows makes you reassign some file types, like PDFs, away from Edge one by one), skips importing bookmarks and passwords, and opts out of Brave Search data sharing and crash reports for a little extra privacy.

Then he cleans up the new tab page: turns off the sponsored new tab ads, keeps the credited Unsplash background photos, adds a search widget set to Google as a quick backup to Brave Search, pins manual favorites instead of auto-filled top sites, shows a larger clock, and keeps the stats card that counts the ads and trackers blocked and the time saved. He hides the Rewards, Wallet and VPN buttons, gives Brave's private AI assistant Leo a quick look (a paid tier adds models like Claude), and finishes on the ultra-dark theme, which suits OLED monitors.

## Chapters

- 0:00 What Brave is
- 0:57 Three ways to install: website, Microsoft Store or winget
- 2:59 First run: default browser and privacy options
- 5:07 Customizing the new tab page
- 8:41 Rewards, Wallet, VPN, Leo AI and themes

## Tags

#BraveBrowser #AdBlocker #PrivacyBrowser #Brave #Chromium #BraveShields #BraveSearch #BraveLeo #Winget #DefaultBrowser #Unsplash #OnlinePrivacy #BrowserSetup #Windows #TechTips

## Description (from YouTube)

this video just goes over how I like to set up my Brave browser and the different features. 


Links
Brave.com 
winget.run

## Transcript

_From YouTube’s automatic captions, with misheard names and terms corrected._

### What Brave is

[0:01] Hey guys, I just got a really quick video for you. So, if you don't know, Brave browser is a Chromium-based browser. So, everything that works in Chrome will work with Brave. And Brave blocks ads by default. Now, I'm going to show you exactly how I set this up. So, first installing Brave. I've already got it installed here, but say we didn't have it installed. In fact, I'm going to go ahead and uninstall it real quick. So, excuse me. I'm doing this in a VM, so sometimes my normal Windows is overlaying.

[0:47] So, we're just going to go to Brave uninstall. And now if you want to install Brave,

### Three ways to install: website, Microsoft Store or winget

[0:59] there's several ways we can do it. So probably the simplest and the easiest way is just to go to Brave. Just type in Brave browser in your favorite search engine. The other way is opening your store Brave. So you can install from here as well. But if you don't install from them from either, another option you can do is use winget. If you're not familiar with winget, winget is the PowerShell or um command-based installer. It's built into Windows now.

[1:42] So all we have to do is type in winget.run. And this is a repository of all the winget packages. So now I can look for Brave. See, it shows up right here as the first one. So I can click on it and it's going to give me the install command. Now there's like a certain language to this and you can either learn that language and remember a bunch of things like Brave.Brave or you can do it the easy way and come to winget.run and copy your commands. And the beautiful thing about this is we can see Brave Software Inc. visit website. This is the official package.

[2:29] So, no shenanigans. But we're going to go ahead. We're not going to do that today. We're just going to install it the normie way through an executable. So, it's going to download our file. Open up our file. Say yes. And this will look very familiar if you've ever installed Chrome. It's actually the same installer menu right here because it's based on Chrome. It isn't Chrome, though. All right. Looks like it we're installed. And there we

### First run: default browser and privacy options

[2:59] go. Privacy by default. Get Brave protection on every link you click. Just set Brave as your default browser. I actually do recommend Brave being your default. It's my been my daily for probably four or five years at this point. Like 80% of the time if I'm going online, I'm using Brave. Me personally, I'm going to go ahead and set as default. Now, Windows does not make this easy. Instead of you clicking one button, you got to click an extra button, too. So, make your def make Brave your default browser. You check that option. Now, one thing that's very frustrating is a default browser only affects certain types of files and links. So, you can see like HTTPS is all going through Brave. URLs are going through Brave, but Edge is still going to be greedy and it's going to be our default PDF viewer. So, if we want to really be default, you got to change these one by one, which is a little bit frustrating.

[3:59] But most of these type of files, you're not opening very often. So, you can you can leave it the other way. But, I just like to go ahead and clean this up and make everything that was Brave or that that was Edge, excuse me, to Brave. All right. Next, it's going to ask you import settings. So, if you have a ton of extensions, save passwords, or bookmarks in your old browser, whether that's Chrome or Microsoft Edge, this is where you'd import it. This is just a a barebones VM, so I don't have anything on here, so I'm going to skip. Want better search results? Join the movement. Contribute to Brave Search. And this is basically going to share some anonymous data about your searches. I'm sure it's far less privacy invasing as Google is, but I'm going to go ahead and say not today, maybe later. And then help make Brave better. Uh, this will send diagnostic data if something crashes. Uh, and it's supposed to be anonymized, but I go ahead and uncheck both of these just as a little extra privacy. So, then we can click finish and boom, we're in. So, from here, you can search the internet, you can do everything that a browser can. Now I am

### Customizing the new tab page

[5:08] going to change a few things. So here on the homepage, I really like their homepage. It's very clean. I'm going to click the settings icon here. And we have show new tab page ads. So Brave will show you like ads for like crypto services and stuff. Although it blocks ads on the rest of the internet in their own browser, they leave some stuff there which can be a bit annoying and it's just a lot cleaner. If we go ahead and shut that off, that way you'll never get ads. And there's a couple things you can do here. Uh you can choose from a color. If you've got a nice OLED monitor, choose the black and save some battery life. Uh you got some pretty gradients. But I I personally like their backgrounds cuz their backgrounds primarily sources from Unsplash. And if you don't know about Unsplash, Unsplash is a royalty-free photography website.

[5:56] And there's some excellent photos. And also what I love is every photo is credited. So we know Hunter Newton, this guy right here, is the guy who took this photo, which is so cool. and say, "I like this photo. I want this photo to be my background." I can go and click this button. It's going to take me to his Unsplash. Okay, there we go. So, then I can go ahead and download this for free and I can download it in multiple sizes, including the original resolution that came out of the camera, which is just so nifty. As you can see, Brave Shields, which is the ad block and tracker blocking, is already blocking something here on this website. So, that's so cool. All right, some other things. Go back into that little settings. search. So, this is going to be your search widget. You can shut this off or you can turn it on because it is kind of redundant because this does searches and this does searches. Sometimes what I like to do is turn this on and say I want Google. So then what I can do is by default I'm just going to use this all the time. But say I'm not getting the right results from Brave Search. Then I can just pop over to Google without even having to go to google.com or anything.

[7:03] Okay. Next we have top sites. So this is going to be your top sites is going to be the sites you visit frequently and it'll autopop populate. Or you can just choose a manual favorites. If you do a manual favorites, it's not going to change. So say I want uh this to be mail and we're going to do gmail.com. Save changes. And now I click on that. It's going to take me to Gmail and see it loaded in the website logo. All right. So, you got that, your top sites, your search. Then you have Brave News. I don't usually use Brave News just because I like my news to be elsewhere, but it is pretty handy if you want something similar to MSN that's less cluttered. Open articles, I think. Yeah, we have to press this button. So, we can turn on Brave News, and it's just when we scroll down, it's going to give us whatever the latest stories are. And it's pretty random, but you can go like follow certain sources. Clock. This is off by default, but I actually kind of like having a bigger clock. Uh, gives me the time. And if you want, you can have a 24-hour clock if you like that military time. And then cards. This is where we control these. So, by default, you're going to have all these, but you're going to have Talk, Rewards and their VPN. I don't use any of those services, and I don't necessarily think you should either. They're decent, but I leave them off. The one I will leave on is actually stats just because it's really cool to see. So, this is going to show you how many ads and trackers have been blocked, how much bandwidth has been saved, and how much time has been

[8:36] saved. So, that's kind of how I like to change the settings right there. And then a couple other things. Rewards.

### Rewards, Wallet, VPN, Leo AI and themes

[8:42] This is their program where if you leave their ads on, it's going to give you some cryptocurrency, but it's like pennies, guys. And it's it's really not worth it. So, I'm just going to right-click that. hide Brave Rewards card. And then we're going to do hide wallet icon as well. Right click, hide a VPN button. The one thing the one service that I do kind of like is Leo. So Leo is a private AI. So it uses uh some of the models. Uh as you can see, you can get like Claude if you pay. It's only 15 bucks a month, which is, you know, it's it's not free uh but it's a little cheaper than like Claude or something. If you're just mainly using AI for web searches and general knowledge, this is actually pretty competent, surprisingly. So, okay, go to settings and then appearance. This is where we can kind of mess with our theme a little bit. So, we got some nice colors. One mode I really appreciate, we also got light mode. Whoa, that's bright. Isn't that bright? Yeah, let's leave on dark mode. Is ultra dark theme.

[9:40] So, this is going to make it really dark and parts of it near pitch black, which is perfect for an OLED monitor. But that's kind of been my uh little tour of Brave browser and how I like to set it up.