04Project / Browser Extension
Brave Shields
Ad and tracker blocking for Chromium browsers.
The overview
What it does.
Ad and tracker blocking without changing browsers. Brave Shields packages a Rust filtering engine as a Chromium extension, combining network rules, cosmetic filtering, and targeted video-player handling. Per-site controls make it easy to relax a rule when a site needs it, or tighten protection when it does not.
Under the hood
The details matter.
- 01
Roughly 16,000 declarative network rules drawn from established ad and privacy filter lists, alongside WebAssembly-powered cosmetic filtering.
- 02
YouTube handling removes ad fields from player responses and cancels ad-slot backoff that can otherwise leave playback waiting.
- 03
Twitch handling switches streams during stitched-in ad breaks and separately hides display-ad layouts that shrink the video player.
- 04
Choose standard or aggressive ad blocking per hostname, toggle shields, and set cookie blocking to cross-site, all, or none.
- 05
Manifest V3 architecture separates the service worker, cosmetic observer, and page-level interceptors without loading remote code.
- 06
Runs in Chromium-based browsers, with isolated incognito state and filter lists compiled into the extension at build time.
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