Install Brave Browser on Ubuntu

Brave is the only Chromium-based browser that I (and many users) trust. So if Firefox is not working for you and you want a Chromium-based browser that has all the privacy features baked-in, then Brave is a perfect choice for you.

But if you try to install brave using apt, it will give you an error saying "E: Unable to locate package brave":

The easiest way to install Brave browser in Ubuntu is to use the snap package. As Ubuntu comes pre-configured with snaps, you can use the following command to install Brave on Ubuntu:

sudo snap install brave

You can even find it in the software center.

However, I am not a big fan of Snap packages for important GUI applications as they ruin the experience.

Instead, I prefer the actual deb package which is a lot better. Let me show how to use that.

Install Brave browser using the Brave repository

I highly recommend going with this method for two main reasons:

1. You don't have to update Brave manually and will be updated while you update the system.
2. The user interface perfectly blends with the system.

To use this method, first, you have to install curl on your Ubuntu machine using the following command:

sudo apt install curl

Next, use the following command to add the GPG key which allows your system to verify that the packages are signed by a trusted entity (the repository maintainer):

sudo curl -fsSLo /usr/share/keyrings/brave-browser-archive-keyring.gpg https://brave-browser-apt-release.s3.brave.com/brave-browser-archive-keyring.gpg

Now, use the following command to add the Brave browser repository:

echo "deb [signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/brave-browser-archive-keyring.gpg] https://brave-browser-apt-release.s3.brave.com/ stable main"|sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/brave-browser-release.list

After that, update your system repositories to take effect from the previous steps:

sudo apt update

Finally, install the Brave browser on Ubuntu using the following command:

sudo apt install brave-browser

Now, you can start the Brave browser from the app menu and it will prompt you asking change your default browser to Brave:

Happy browsing 😄.

How to uninstall Brave browser

If you want to remove the Brave browser which you recently installed using Brave repository, then you can use the apt remove command in the following manner to remove Brave browser from Ubuntu:

sudo apt remove brave-browser

Optionally, if you want to remove the Brave repository, then you can use the rm command in the following manner:

sudo rm /etc/apt/sources.list.d/brave-browser-release.list

You may also delete the ~/.config/BraveSoftware/ directory for any browser related data.

How to update Brave?

Since you have added Brave repository, you'll get updates on the browser along with the system updates. Just keep your Ubuntu system updated regularly.