Brave v1.94.117 update brings News in sidebar, lets you hide the Vertical Tabs button, and more

The latest Brave update brings various user-facing changes that improve the way you interact with the browser, and there’s one major new feature that has finally landed in the stable version.

Brave v1.94.117 is now available to the public, and you can view a snippet of the changelog below. The list of improvements is rather lengthy, so we’ve picked out a few important user-facing changes that you’ll actually notice while using the browser.

As expected, the update showed up as soon as I opened Brave.

Here’s a list of the important changes:

1. Email Aliases is the biggest new feature. It lets you create disposable email addresses so a website never gets access to your real email. While the emails still land in your actual inbox, the sender doesn’t see your real email address. You’ll need a Brave account to use this feature, and the free tier offers 5 Email Aliases. We elaborated on this feature in a separate article.
   
2. Brave News in the sidebar: Instead of news sitting only in the New Tab page, you can now put it in your side panel. First, you’ll need to enable the sidebar, and then tap the “+” button. From there, you’ll find the option to add Brave News.
   
3. Show/hide vertical tabs button: Under Settings, you can now select whether to show or hide the vertical tabs button. Even if you turn the button off, the tabs will remain vertical. The button to hide them is the only thing that won’t show up. It’s under Toolbar Customization.
   
4. You can now drag the vertical tab bar, and it’ll remember your scroll position.
5. There’s a keyboard shortcut for Block Elements: Under “Shortcuts,” you can find this option. There are also keyboard shortcuts to toggle side panels.
   
   
6. Import/Export Brave News with OPML: You can now import or export your news list as an .opml file after this update. Under Brave News, look for the “Import…” option.
7. Leo has new default models, and the panel closes when the chat goes full-page.
8. Backgrounds on the New Tab page now shuffle.
9. Minor visual changes, Chromium update, security improvements, crash fixes.

You can view the entire official changelog here.

In other Brave news, the company is testing WebMCP to give its Leo assistant direct control over websites. More on that here. The iOS app is also picking up partial Liquid Glass design.

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