How to show (or hide) the bookmarks bar in Brave

Updated 18 October 2026

Press Ctrl+Shift+B (Cmd+Shift+B on a Mac) to show or hide the bookmarks bar. For finer control, Brave’s Appearance settings let you show it always, never, or only on the new tab page.

Checked in Brave 1.97 on Windows, October 2026. Menu names are the same on Mac and Linux.

Choose when the bar appears

1. Go to brave://settings/appearance.
2. Find Show bookmarks bar and pick one:
   • Always: on every page.
   • Never: hidden everywhere.
   • Only on the new tab page: visible on new tabs, hidden on websites.

In the same section, Show tab groups in bookmarks bar controls whether your saved tab groups appear on the bar, and a second switch pins new tab groups there automatically.

Why the bookmarks bar disappeared

• It’s set to the new tab page only. The bar shows on new tabs and vanishes once you open a site. Switch to Always.
• The shortcut was pressed by accident. Ctrl+Shift+B toggles it; press it again.
• It’s empty. With nothing saved on the bar, there’s nothing to show. Bookmark a page and choose Bookmarks bar as the folder, or drag bookmarks onto it in the Bookmark Manager (Ctrl+Shift+O).
• The Bookmark Manager is empty too. Then the bookmarks themselves are gone, so check sync and backups; the steps in recovering deleted bookmarks work the same way in Brave, whose profile also keeps a Bookmarks.bak file.

Bring your Chrome bookmarks over

If the bar is empty because you just moved from Chrome, go to brave://settings/importData and import bookmarks from Chrome, or follow moving Chrome bookmarks to Brave.

Or replace the dashboard with your bookmarks

Brave installs extensions from the Chrome Web Store, including ones that take over the new tab page. Stackboard is one: it turns every new tab into a board of your own bookmarks, in spaces and stacks, with themes and no ads, and it saves everything as ordinary bookmarks in Brave. To go back to Brave’s dashboard later, turn the extension off at brave://extensions.