I'll walk you through it:
Upon loading the browser on a fresh install, you are greeted with a new tab page pushing Brave Rewards. With manipulative UX, there is no button to disagree or remove the feature, only a button for "start using rewards". You can hide it by clicking the 3 dots, which for most users they're never going to do unfortunately.
Looking at the address bar, there's a triangle up there with a badge. Hiding the new tab Rewards card doesn't hide this triangle. Clicking on this does not show a remove feature option. Beside that, there's a sidebar button and a wallet icon again with a badge. Clicking on this only shows a learn more button. I can right click both of these, and finally see a hide option.
Finally all of that is hidden. Maybe I browse a page or so, and then open a new tab. I'm shown an ad on the new tab screen. Right clicking it shows no hide button. So I'll try the customize button. Here's where you have to scroll down and disable the "show sponsored images" option.
All done, right? Ok let's browse Reddit for a bit. There's where you see the "tip" button under every post. Right clicking shows nothing about hiding it. So into the settings you have to go to finally remove the last bit of the feature and be prompted to relaunch the browser.
Hamburger menu -> Settings -> Brave Rewards -> Uncheck the boxes (Reddit, Github, Twitter)
---
...or the baroque but useful to know:
Hamburger menu -> Settings -> Shields -> Content Filtering -> Create Custom Filters -> reddit.com## .action-brave-tip
(which you can get to quicker with a right click context menu)
Wait, that actually sounds like a great feature! Is there a way to get it for other browsers?
The only actual counterbalance to google's power in web is the firefox browser and it's basically dead because "wah wah they bought pocket wah wah there are two tiles on the new tab page that show popular websites wah wah" so alright I guess we will just do the whole IE6 debacle again this time with less willingness from regulators to fix our bullshit.
Leaves you with this:
It seems it’s a go app and it’s not the best optimised thing in the world. So I turned it off again.
I’m still a fan of Brave. The only browser with actual integration of vertical tabs besides Edge (no the firefox extensions don’t count)
[0]: https://vivaldi.com/desktop/
[1]: https://arc.net/
Arc is basically someone looking at Vivaldi and hitting it with the "design stick". I didn't anticipate I'd love it as much as I do. Since it's Mac-only I only use it on my work machine, but that's 80% of my browsing anyway and I have no desire to sync my work shit anywhere else.
Tree style tabs has kept me on FF for a decade.
I like the desktop metaphor that computers adopted, and one way to use it is to think of different application windows as different paper documents on your meatspace desktop. You could have a rule that only 1 piece of paper is on your desktop at any time, but I find it much easier and more efficient to work with, as needed, two or more pieces of paper on my desktop. When multiple pieces of paper are on my desktop, I can arrange them such that I can easily focus on different papers by only moving my eyes, or, if the papers are relatively far apart, by moving my head and/or the rest of my body a little too.
I personally like the desk organization rule of "1 project/task per desk", i.e. you clear your desk when switching tasks to ensure only relevant things are on your desk / within your visual domain. I use computers to similar effect with different desktops/workspaces.
YMMV applies.
EDIT: It looks some of Vivaldi's source is available FWIW, https://vivaldi.com/source/
Turned off by default.