[Desktop] Brave has no option to prevent "Set default browser" notification appearing repeatedly

[matthewbal]

Description

On Linux, each time Brave is launched, it asks to be the default browser. If I click the x, it goes away and asks on the next Brave startup. If I select "Make default browser", it goes away and then also appears on the next startup.

Steps to Reproduce

1. Install Brave on KDE Plasma (Ubuntu 18.04.4 LTS)
2. Launch Brave
3. Dismiss Notification
4. Exit Brave
5. Launch Brave
6. Notification Appears again

Actual result:

The notification cannot be removed permanently and appears every time. To fix this, you need to manually edit files as a workaround.

Expected result:

The notification should only appear once, and there should be an option in settings to never display the notification. Other modern browsers offer such functionality from the settings menu.

Reproduces how often:

Happens every time on my machine. The same issue has happened to many other Linux users: See below from the first page of google

#1274
#6860
https://community.brave.com/t/cannot-set-brave-as-default-browser/34661
https://www.reddit.com/r/brave_browser/comments/9yy7e0/disable_make_default_browser_prompt_at_launch/
https://forum.mxlinux.org/viewtopic.php?f=108&t=57348

Brave version (brave://version info)

Brave 1.7.92 Chromium: 80.0.3987.163 (Official Build) (64-bit)
Revision e7fbe071abe9328cdce4ffedac9822435fbd3656-refs/branch-heads/3987@{#1037}
OS Linux
JavaScript V8 8.0.426.30
Flash (Disabled)
User Agent Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/80.0.3987.163 Safari/537.36
Command Line /opt/brave.com/brave/brave --enable-dom-distiller --disable-domain-reliability --no-pings --extension-content-verification=enforce_strict --extensions-install-verification=enforce --sync-url=https://no-thanks.invalid --enable-features=PasswordImport,PassiveMixedContentWarning,AutoupgradeMixedContent,WebUIDarkMode,MixedContentSiteSetting,SimplifyHttpsIndicator,DnsOverHttps --disable-features=AutofillServerCommunication,LookalikeUrlNavigationSuggestionsUI,VideoPlaybackQuality,AllowPopupsDuringPageUnload,SmsReceiver,AudioServiceOutOfProcess,NotificationTriggers --flag-switches-begin --flag-switches-end --disable-webrtc-apm-in-audio-service --disable-sync
Executable Path /opt/brave.com/brave/brave
Profile Path /home/arkady/.config/BraveSoftware/Brave-Browser/Default

Linux Version

NAME="Ubuntu"
VERSION="18.04.4 LTS (Bionic Beaver)"
ID=ubuntu
ID_LIKE=debian
PRETTY_NAME="Ubuntu 18.04.4 LTS"
VERSION_ID="18.04"
HOME_URL="https://www.ubuntu.com/"
SUPPORT_URL="https://help.ubuntu.com/"
BUG_REPORT_URL="https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/"
PRIVACY_POLICY_URL="https://www.ubuntu.com/legal/terms-and-policies/privacy-policy"
VERSION_CODENAME=bionic
UBUNTU_CODENAME=bionic

Other Additional Information:

• Does the issue resolve itself when disabling Brave Shields? N/A
• Does the issue resolve itself when disabling Brave Rewards? No
• Is the issue reproducible on the latest version of Chrome? No

Miscellaneous Information:

I acknowledge this issue appears elsewhere in the repo, but they are dead from 2018, and don't address that we could add a setting to have the browser never ask - this would resolve all edge cases and prevent people having to do workarounds to stop brave asking on every launch

[landshrk]

Same issue on Arch 5.4.32-1-lts. Same issue previously on Manjaro whateverversionitwas.

[nova@novarch ~]$ pacman -Qi brave-bin
Name            : brave-bin  
Version         : 1:1.7.92-1  
Description     : Web browser that blocks ads and trackers by default (binary release).
Architecture    : x86_64
URL             : https://brave.com/download
Licenses        : MPL2  BSD  custom:chromium
Groups          : None
Provides        : brave  brave-browser
Depends On      : gtk3  nss  alsa-lib  libxss  ttf-font
Optional Deps   : cups: Printer support
              pepper-flash: Adobe Flash support
              libgnome-keyring: Enable GNOME keyring support
Required By     : None
Optional For    : None
Conflicts With  : brave
Replaces        : None
Installed Size  : 235.56 MiB
Packager        : Unknown Packager
Build Date      : Sun Apr 19 01:14:08 2020
Install Date    : Sun Apr 19 01:18:36 2020
Install Reason  : Explicitly installed
Install Script  : No
Validated By    : None

[nova@novarch ~]$ ls -l /usr/share/applications | grep brave
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  4972 Apr 19 01:14 brave-browser.desktop

brave://version output:

Brave | 1.7.92 Chromium: 80.0.3987.163 (Official Build) unknown (64-bit)
Revision | e7fbe071abe9328cdce4ffedac9822435fbd3656-refs/branch-heads/3987@{#1037}
OS | Linux
JavaScript | V8 8.0.426.30
Flash | (Disabled)
User Agent | Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) 
Chrome/80.0.3987.163 Safari/537.36
Command Line | /usr/lib/brave-bin/brave --enable-dom-distiller --disable-domain-reliability --no-pings --extension-content-verification=enforce_strict --extensions-install-verification=enforce --sync-url=https://no-thanks.invalid --enable-features=PasswordImport,DnsOverHttps,SimplifyHttpsIndicator,MixedContentSiteSetting,AutoupgradeMixedContent,PassiveMixedContentWarning,WebUIDarkMode --disable-features=AutofillServerCommunication,LookalikeUrlNavigationSuggestionsUI,AllowPopupsDuringPageUnload,SmsReceiver,AudioServiceOutOfProcess,NotificationTriggers,VideoPlaybackQuality --flag-switches-begin --flag-switches-end --disable-webrtc-apm-in-audio-service --disable-sync
Executable Path | /usr/lib/brave-bin/brave
Profile Path | /home/nova/.config/BraveSoftware/Brave-Browser/Default`

None of the "fixes" that have been posted from a couple years ago have had any effect. And again, this has existed across a couple of Linux distros for me.

[rlndwgnr]

What fixed it for me (and i haven't read this anywhere else ) was changing the default application of html-files, via the rightclick-menu of a random html-file

( i also changed everything in ~/.config/mimeapps.list that said "firefox" to "brave-browser" before, not sure if this is necessary too)

[XavierCLL]

Hi, I not only confirm the notification error but also confirm the button to "Make default" browser not work, not changes the settings in Plasma 5.19.5 (on Archlinux) using Brave version 1.13.82

[fmarier]

For Arch users, we are aware of the issue and are tracking it separately here: #2377 (see the issue for a possible work-around).

For Ubuntu, here are a few things you could check to make sure that Brave is set as default correctly: https://feeding.cloud.geek.nz/posts/set-default-web-browser-debian-ubuntu/

[karenkliu]

Does #12203 fix this issue?

cc @simonhong

[simonhong]

@karenkliu Infobar will not be visible anymore with #12203
Instead, our modal dialog will be shown repeatedly only for 2nd,3rd, 4th, 8th, and 20th launch.

[karenkliu]

@rebron Can we close this issue since Simon's work should have removed the infobar?

[rebron]

Closing per fix in #12203