Brave Domain Manager
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Manage Brave's domain blocklist without touching regedit.

Brave supports blocking specific domains via a machine-wide policy stored in the Windows registry, but Brave itself has no UI for managing that list. Brave Domain Manager fills that gap — add, remove, search, undo/redo, and back up your blocklist from a normal desktop app.

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Brave Domain Manager showing five sample blocked domains in the Domains view, with the Undo/Redo toolbar, a search field, and a Status/History/Logging inspector panel on the right.
The Domains view — rail navigation on the left, blocklist in the middle, live status in the inspector on the right.

Content filtering

Block sites at the browser-policy level, independent of any single profile or extension.

Bulk management

Import or export whole lists of domains in one batch instead of one at a time.

Safety net

Every change is undoable, and you can export a snapshot to restore later if something goes wrong.

Installation

Windows 10/11, 64-bit

Download & install

  1. Get the latest installer from the Releases page — brave-domain-manager-<version>-setup.exe.
  2. Run the downloaded .exe. Windows SmartScreen may warn that the app is unrecognized, since the build isn't code-signed. Choose More info → Run anyway to proceed.
  3. Follow the installer prompts — you can choose the install directory, and a shortcut is added to the Start Menu.
Prerequisites: Windows 10 or 11 (64-bit), and the Brave browser installed. Brave doesn't need to be running while you use this app.

Building from source

Developers can build the app directly instead of using a pre-built installer. See the main repository README for build instructions.

Getting Started

Launch Brave Domain Manager from the Start Menu. The app opens directly to the Domains view, showing your currently blocked domains.

No admin launch required. The app starts as a regular user; Windows only prompts for elevation (UAC) at the moment you actually add or remove a domain, since writing to the registry is the only operation that needs admin rights. Reading the list, searching, and browsing Settings never require elevation.

Managing Domain Entries

Adding a single domain

  1. Type a domain into the field at the top of the Domains view — format [subdomain.]domain.tld, e.g. example.com or ads.tracker.example.com.
  2. Click Add domain (or press Enter).
  3. Approve the UAC prompt. The domain is written to the registry and appears in the list immediately.

Adding domains from a file

The Add from file view, with a Browse button and a note describing supported .txt, .csv, and .json formats.
Add from file — reached via the rail's Actions group.
  1. Under Add from file, click Browse….
  2. Choose a .txt (one domain per line), .csv (one domain per row), or .json file (an array of domain strings).
  3. Each entry is validated and staged before anything is written — invalid entries and domains already on your blocklist are flagged with a reason and skipped automatically.
  4. Click Add N valid domain(s) to commit the batch. This triggers exactly one UAC prompt for the whole batch, not one per domain.

Removing domains & searching

Click Remove on a single row, or check multiple boxes and click Delete selected to remove several at once. The Search blocked domains… field does fuzzy matching, so minor typos or partial names still find the right entry.

Undo & Redo

Every add or remove is undoable:

  • Use the Undo/Redo buttons in the toolbar, which show what action they'd affect.
  • Or use Ctrl+Z / Ctrl+Y (Ctrl+Shift+Z also works for redo). These are ignored while a text field has focus, so they never interfere with normal text editing.

History is per-session — it resets when you close the app. If the registry changes outside the app between an action and its undo (another instance of the app, or a manual regedit edit touching the same entry), the app detects the conflict and refuses to overwrite it rather than silently clobbering the unrelated change. For anything you want to keep permanently, use Backup & Restore instead.

Backup & Restore

The Backup and Restore view, with an Export to file button and Merge/Replace restore mode radio buttons next to a Restore from file button.
A deliberate, long-term snapshot mechanism — independent of Undo/Redo.
  • Export to file… saves your current blocklist to a JSON file you choose.
  • Restore from file… loads a previously exported (or hand-written) JSON snapshot, in one of two modes:
    • Merge — adds the snapshot's domains to your current list; anything already blocked is skipped.
    • Replace — clears your current list first, then restores exactly what's in the snapshot.

Settings

The Settings view, with Theme radio buttons (Follow system, Light, Dark), a Font scale dropdown, a Logging section with an Enable logging checkbox and eight category checkboxes, and an About card showing the installed version number.
Theme, font scale, and per-category logging — all take effect immediately, no restart.
  • Theme — Light, Dark, or Follow system.
  • Font scale — 70%–140%, applied immediately across the whole app.
  • Logging — disabled by default. When enabled, choose which categories to record (registry access, user activity, configuration changes, audit, security, performance, startup/shutdown, success/error). Logs are written to your user data folder and rotate daily.
  • About — shows the installed version number.

Updates

The app checks for a new version once, on launch, and downloads it in the background if one is found — you'll see a quiet "Update available" indicator at the bottom of the sidebar. Once it's finished downloading, that indicator becomes "Update ready"; clicking it shows what changed before you commit to anything. Installing restarts the app.

Dark theme

Switching Theme to Dark (or Follow system on a dark-mode machine) restyles the whole app immediately:

The same Domains view shown in dark theme, with a graphite background, cream text, and a teal accent color.
The same Domains view in dark theme.

Troubleshooting

"Windows protected your PC" (SmartScreen)

This is expected for an unsigned build — there's no publisher certificate. Choose More info → Run anyway. If you'd rather verify the source first, see Building from source.

A UAC prompt appears when I add or remove a domain

Expected, by design — writing to the registry requires administrator rights, so the app requests elevation only for that specific action, not for the whole app. Declining the prompt cancels just that one add/remove.

My domain was rejected as invalid

Domains must match [subdomain.]domain.tld — for example example.com or ads.tracker.example.co.uk. Leading http://, https://, and www. are stripped automatically, and anything after a / is ignored, so pasting a full URL still works.

Undo/redo says it can't complete an action

This means the registry changed outside the app since that action was recorded (see Undo & Redo) — the app refuses to overwrite data it didn't create, rather than failing silently. Check the current state of the entry in question and adjust manually if needed.

The Documentation tab won't load in the app

If you're offline, the embedded copy of this site can't load. The app shows a retry option and a link to open this page in your regular browser instead.

License

Brave Domain Manager is licensed under the MIT License.

Additional Resources