Using ChatGPT-5 to Troubleshoot a Problem With Brave Browser

Recently I had a problem with updating my Brave browser. It wouldn’t update automatically and trying to do it manually just gave me a second, if newer, installation of Brave. DuckDuckGo and Google weren’t helping, since they turned up search results that weren’t answering my question. So like I did before when I had a technical issue, I went to ChatGPT-5 to help. It came up with this:

Me: I have Brave 1.79.126 (Official Build) (64-bit) and it says it can’t upgrade to the latest version. I also can’t find how to uninstall it on Ubuntu. I looked in software manager but it’s not there. How can I fix this?

ChatGPT: Got it — you’re on Ubuntu with Brave 1.79.126, and you can’t update or see it in Software Manager to uninstall.
That usually means it wasn’t installed via Ubuntu’s official package manager (APT), but through another method (snap, flatpak, or a direct .deb download).

Here’s how you can check and fix it:

1. Check how Brave is installed

Run these commands in a terminal:

# Check if Brave is installed via apt
apt list --installed | grep brave

# Check if Brave is a snap
snap list | grep brave

# Check if Brave is a flatpak
flatpak list | grep brave

2. If it’s installed via APT

You should see something like brave-browser/stable.
Remove it:

sudo apt remove brave-browser
sudo apt purge brave-browser

Then, to reinstall properly with updates:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install apt-transport-https curl

# Add Brave’s key and repo
sudo curl -fsSLo /usr/share/keyrings/brave-browser-archive-keyring.gpg https://brave-browser-apt-release.s3.brave.com/brave-browser-archive-keyring.gpg

echo "deb [signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/brave-browser-archive-keyring.gpg] https://brave-browser-apt-release.s3.brave.com/ stable main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/brave-browser-release.list

sudo apt update
sudo apt install brave-browser

3. If it’s installed via Snap

sudo snap remove brave
sudo snap install brave

4. If it’s installed via Flatpak

sudo flatpak uninstall com.brave.Browser
sudo flatpak install flathub com.brave.Browser

5. If it was installed from a .deb file directly

In that case, Ubuntu’s package manager won’t track updates. The easiest fix is:

sudo apt remove brave-browser

Then reinstall using the official repo (step 2).

✅ After reinstalling from the official Brave APT repo, Brave will stay updated automatically with your system updates.

Do you want me to suggest the exact uninstall command for your case? If you can paste me the output of:

apt list --installed | grep brave
snap list | grep brave
flatpak list | grep brave

I can pinpoint the right one.

Me: Here’s the output I got: snap list | grep brave flatpak list | grep brave WARNING: apt does not have a stable CLI interface. Use with caution in scripts. brave-browser/now 1.79.126 amd64 [installed,local] brave-keyring/now 1.18 all [installed,local] brave 1.81.137 539 latest/stable brave**

ChatGPT: Thanks for sharing that — now it’s clear what’s happening:

You have two installs of Brave:
1. brave-browser 1.79.126 → installed via a manual .deb file (APT shows [installed,local], meaning it’s not tied to a repo, so it won’t update).
2. brave 1.81.137 → installed via Snap (this one is up to date).

That’s why you can’t upgrade the .deb one, and it doesn’t show up in Software Manager.

✅ How to fix it

Remove the old .deb install (the one that can’t update): sudo apt remove brave-browser brave-keyring sudo apt autoremove
Keep the Snap version (brave 1.81.137) — it will update automatically with Snap.
You can launch it as usual from your applications menu (might be listed simply as “Brave”).

Optional: If you prefer the APT version (instead of Snap)

If you don’t like Snap and want the repo-based APT version (so it updates with apt upgrade):

Remove the Snap version: sudo snap remove brave
Add Brave’s official APT repo: sudo apt install apt-transport-https curl sudo curl -fsSLo /usr/share/keyrings/brave-browser-archive-keyring.gpg \ https://brave-browser-apt-release.s3.brave.com/brave-browser-archive-keyring.gpg echo "deb [signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/brave-browser-archive-keyring.gpg] \ https://brave-browser-apt-release.s3.brave.com/ stable main" | \ sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/brave-browser-release.list sudo apt update sudo apt install brave-browser

That way Brave will always update with the rest of your system.

👉 Do you want to stick with the Snap version (already latest and auto-updating), or would you rather switch to the APT repo version?

What I Did:

I opted to eliminate the one that was installed with a manual .deb file and keep the newer version that was going to update automatically (hopefully). So that’s how I found out that manual .deb files don’t always show up in Ubuntu’s software manager or get automatically updated. In that case, ChatGPT gave me the right answer when I was stumped and search engines weren’t helping.