I am not your average internet user.

That’s not to say that I’m special in any way. I only do a few things differently than most people:

• I don’t want to preserve my internet history

• I will not browse the web without a content blocker, like uBlock Origin

• I want the software I use to be FOSS, close to FOSS or FOSS-friendly (no Chrome, Opera, Vivaldi, etc…)

• I want my passwords and bookmarks synced between my Linux laptop/desktop and iPhone.

The problem(s) at hand:

It all comes down to a bug in Brave on iOS, or maybe a limitation placed on it by Apple. Which I am not sure, but probably Brave. Brave on iOS has issues with its password autofill functionality. For some reason, it does not present a password-fill prompt using passwords stored in Brave’s own Sync database. [1] [2] [3]

Filling the first username/password combo saved is not enough! I have a feeling it may do this, but this does not help when you have multiple accounts with one service.

What I think needs to happen is for Brave to expose its passwords to iOS like Bitwarden and other password managers do.

Anyway, the problems:

• Safari on iOS on my old iPhone 7 Plus is not very fast. Web benchmarks I ran indicate it is 50% slower than Brave on iOS - I’m not sure why, I thought all browsers used the same web engine…

• Content blockers and ad-blocker extensions on iOS are not that good. I’ve tried Adguard Pro with filter lists and Adguard DNS turned on. DNS does not work for ads served from first party sources. If Youtube shows you an ad served from youtube.com, DNS will not filter it. Adguard Pro issues may come down to implementation or the included filters lists being insufficient.

• Firefox on iOS does not include an adblocker and extension support only exists on Android (thanks Apple)

• Firefox Focus has an adblocker but it does not work that well, has no tab support and no sync support

The solution

Bitwarden is a semi-open source password manager. Parts of it are licensed under AGPL and some are licensed under their own Bitwarden license. From my limited research into it, it acts in a similar way to MEGA’s license, that basically they own any code contributed to it and can re-use that code in a proprietary product. So, it’s not ideal, we would prefer a completely GPL or AGPL software, but I think it is OK for my usecase (I am using iOS, after all…)

I installed the app on my iPhone, re-enabled saving passwords and selected Bitwarden as the password provider. Now, Brave has an iOS-provided passwords button when going to a website which pulls from Bitwarden.

On my laptop, I install the extension. It’s a little bloated and takes a moment to open up when clicking the extension icon. Thankfully, you can bind autofill to a key command (I’ve chosen Alt-P) and also a key command for opening the extension’s window (I’ve chosen Alt-Shift-P.) By hitting the autofill key multiple times you can cycle between various accounts you have saved. Handy!

I still don’t like password managers and I would still prefer to use a browser’s native syncing functionality but this is the best solution I’ve found unless I buy a macbook.