v2.2.1 - Disable Hardware Acceleration, review backlog, install fix

A small release: one new toggle, eight fixes from the review backlog, and a documented install command that could never have worked.

All three platforms this time — the new toggle is in the Linux and macOS scripts too, unlike v2.2.0 which was Windows-only.

Windows users: the one-liner in v2.2.0's README was broken

It ended in .\SlimBrave.ps1, which runs the script in your own session — and Windows' default execution policy is Restricted, so it failed with "running scripts is disabled on this system" on any machine that had not already been changed. The command now launches the way the clone method always did:

iwr "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ChaoticSi1ence/SlimBrave-Neo/main/SlimBrave.ps1" -OutFile "SlimBrave.ps1"; powershell -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File .\SlimBrave.ps1

The bypass applies to that one launch. It changes nothing on your machine, and you should not run Set-ExecutionPolicy — the usual advice for this error weakens script execution permanently, for every user on the box.

New: Disable Hardware Acceleration

Reported by a user: the tool could pin GPU acceleration on but not off. It is the same policy either way — HardwareAccelerationModeEnabled, verified against the Chromium definition — so this exposes the value that was missing rather than adding a new key. 79 policies now, over the same 75 distinct keys.

It sits beside the force-on row as a mutually exclusive pair: tick one and the other clears, leave both unticked and the setting stays yours in brave://settings. In no preset, deliberately — Chromium's default is on, so forcing it off costs rendering performance and battery. It is for when the GPU path is itself the fault: a faulty driver flickering or corrupting the window, a VM or RDP session with no usable GPU, artifacts while screen sharing. Needs a browser restart.

Fixed

The Fluent GUI review had a 16-voter budget and 28 findings never got a vote. All 28 were re-checked against v2.2.0: fifteen were already cured by that release's DPI work, three by later commits, one never held. Of the nine that survived, eight are fixed here — all minor, none affecting what gets written to your registry:

• Export and Import opened in the wrong profile. Under over-the-shoulder UAC — where you run the tool but someone else types the admin password — the file dialogs opened in that account's Documents. They now use yours.
• The status tooltip never wrapped. A long Apply message rendered as one ~1800 px line. It now breaks on words.
• Enter and Escape in the search box made the edit control beep. Both are swallowed; Escape still clears.
• Two leaks: switching pages detached its controls without disposing them (~85 window handles per All Options visit), and a dropdown menu was built on every click and never released.
• Text rendering is now consistent across every part of the window instead of three parts forcing ClearType and six inheriting the system default.
• Hovering a row no longer re-measures its caption on every mouse move.
• A regression test pinned two variable names, so renaming them failed it with a message that was untrue.

Also

The Linux recommendation pointed at Brave Origin's nightly page; Origin has reached the Release channel and installs from Brave's own apt/rpm repositories as brave-origin. The README is restructured — same content, 62% shorter on screen, with the reference material collapsible and Windows first.

Older releases now have correct checksums. The sums published for v1.9.5 through v2.1.0 were computed from a CRLF checkout and match nothing anyone downloads. Each of those releases now carries a correction note and a SHA256SUMS-corrected asset; the originals are left in place. The procedure was fixed before v2.2.0.

Verifying this release

df1383d603332edcd0fb339583f93bf75ff7cb81ec2b5b8c10d1231f5808ac13  SlimBrave.ps1
b041de3ff605020f77046b149a9bcb183a76f188addac1c95db80705a75c269d  slimbrave-linux.py
15b9520f7720a40fe9b96cf9ceed928bbae2bf888838a3ee396afdb602a3f9f2  slimbrave-mac.py

Get-FileHash -Algorithm SHA256 .\SlimBrave.ps1

sha256sum slimbrave-linux.py     # Linux
shasum -a 256 slimbrave-mac.py   # macOS

These are the bytes GitHub serves, checked against the raw URL before publishing.

Known limits, unchanged from v2.2.0

• No keyboard path. Only the two text boxes take keyboard focus, so keyboard-only and screen-reader users cannot operate the Windows GUI. The pre-Fluent GUI could. This is a regression and it is still the next thing to fix.
• The Windows GUI has still not been verified on a real high-DPI display; a scaling change after the app starts is not picked up, so restart it.

Tags are not signed — there is no maintainer signing key published yet. See SECURITY.md.