Site not working in Brave? Check Brave Shields

Brave Shields blocks ads, trackers, fingerprinting and some cookies on every site, before any extension gets a look. Most of the time that’s invisible. Sometimes it takes a video player, a sign-in button or a comment section with it.

Updated November 2026. Menus move around between versions: if a label is a little different, look for the closest match.

Signs it’s Brave Shields

A blank space where a video, map, comments or a chat widget should be.
“Sign in with Google” or another sign-in button that doesn’t appear or does nothing.
A message asking you to “disable your ad blocker” even though you have no extensions.
The page works in another browser on the same computer and network.

Quick test: is it Shields?

Click the Brave lion icon at the right of the address bar.
Switch Shields down for this site. Brave reloads the page.
If the page now works, Shields was the cause. Switch Shields back up and use the steps below to let through only what’s needed.

See exactly what Shields blocked

Open the lion icon again. The panel shows how many items were blocked on this site.
Select the blocked count to expand the list of blocked addresses.
Look for anything that sounds like the broken feature: a video host, recaptcha, a payment provider, a comments service, or the site’s own domain (for example static.example.com or api.example.com).

Fix it without turning Shields off

Open Advanced controls in the Shields panel and change one setting at a time, reloading after each:

Trackers & ads blocking: if it’s set to Aggressive, try Standard. Aggressive also blocks first-party trackers, which some sites need.
Block scripts: if it’s on, turn it off for this site. It blocks all JavaScript, which breaks most modern sites.
Cookies: “Block all cookies” logs you out everywhere; “Block cross-site cookies” is enough for most people.
Fingerprinting protection: the strict setting can upset canvas-based features (drawing tools, some CAPTCHAs). Try the standard setting.
Sign-in and embeds: Brave blocks some social sign-in and embedded posts by default. Allow the ones you use in brave://settings/socialBlocking (for example “Allow Google login buttons on third-party sites”).

Good to know

Shields settings are per site and remembered. Your defaults for every site are in brave://settings/shields.
Brave’s filter lists are in Settings → Shields → Content filtering. Extra lists (for example cookie-notice or annoyance lists) block more and break more.
If you also run uBlock Origin or another blocker, both may block the same thing. You’ll need to allow it in each.

Let Why Block find it for you

Shields blocks are invisible to extensions, so most tools can’t tell you about them. Why Block detects them anyway: Brave reports them the same way as extension blocks, and page elements that fail with no network request at all point to Shields.

It lists each blocked domain with the most likely cause, and names Brave Shields when that’s the one.
The automatic test (after you confirm) switches your blocking extensions off one at a time, reloads the page and compares, so it can say for certain which one is responsible. Anything still blocked with every extension off is the browser’s own blocker.
The impact rating at the top says what the blocking actually broke (sign-in, video, comments, payments, images, the whole page) and what was blocked as intended (ads, analytics, tracking pixels).