Add a policy option to disable Brave Rewards

This is a sub-task for https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/issues/22029

Test Plan:

1. Set the policy to disable Brave Rewards:

• [Linux] (sudo is needed in this step) Go to /etc/brave/policies/managed (create folders if not exists already), create test_policy.json with content:

{
  "BraveRewardsDisabled": true
}

• [Windows] Open regedit and create the following keys: BraveSoftware\Brave under the existing key

  • For 64 bit, HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\WOW6432Node\Policies
  • For 32 bit, HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies

  Create a DWORD value at this path called BraveRewardsDisabled and set the value as 1

• [MacOS]

  • Create folder /Library/Managed Preferences/<username>/, if one doesn’t exist (you will need to use sudo)
  • In the above folder create (or open; you will need to use sudo) the file named com.brave.Browser.<CHANNEL>.plist (where <CHANNEL> will be nightly, beta, or nothing for the release channel: e.g com.brave.Browser.nightly.plist) with the content

    <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
    <!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
    <plist version="1.0">
     <dict>
       <key>BraveRewardsDisabled</key>
       <true/>
     </dict>
    </plist>
    

  Note: MacOS caches these preferences, so if you delete or rename this file and restart the browser it will still retain this policy. In order to reset the policy quit the browser fully, delete or rename the file and issue to following command:

  defaults read /Library/Managed\ Preferences/<username>/com.brave.Browser.<CHANNEL>.plist
  

  You should see output similar to:

  2022-09-28 18:46:43.413 defaults[10710:143731] 
  Domain /Library/Managed Preferences/<username>/com.brave.Browser.nightly.plist does not exist
  

  Start the browser and you should be able to see the Rewards feature again.

1. Open Brave and navigate to brave://policy. Observe:

1. Observe Brave Rewards icon is not shown in the location bar
2. Navigate to brave://rewards. Observe This site can’t be reached error page.
3. Navigate to brave://rewards-internals. Observe This site can’t be reached error page.
4. Open application menu (☰). Observe Brave Rewards menu item is not present
5. Navigate to brave://settings. Observe:
   • Brave Rewards item is not present in the top Settings toolbar
   • Brave Rewards item is not present in the left navigation menu
   • In the Shields section the sentence This will block most ads on websites, not Brave Private Ads — those are controlled in the Brave Rewards settings. is replaced with This will block most ads on websites.
6. Open application menu -> More Tools -> Task Manager. Observe Extension: Brave Rewards is not present (note that you would need to disable #brave-rewards-webui-panel flag to have the extension loaded normally).

[LaurenWags]

Verified with

Brave | 1.45.85 Chromium: 106.0.5249.91 (Official Build) beta (x86_64)
-- | --
Revision | fa96d5f07b1177d1bf5009f647a5b8c629762157-refs/branch-heads/5249@{#707}
OS | macOS Version 12.6 (Build 21G115)

Verified the test plan from https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/issues/25151#issue-1359473235:

• Confirmed BraveRewardsDisabled shown on brave://policy page
• Confirmed Brave Rewards icon not shown in URL bar
• Confirmed brave://rewards displays This site can’t be reached error page
• Confirmed brave://rewards-internals displays This site can’t be reached error page
• Confirmed under the application menu (☰) Brave Rewards menu item is not present
• Confirmed under brave://settings:
  • Brave Rewards item is not present in the top Settings toolbar
  • Brave Rewards item is not present in the left navigation menu
  • In the Shields section the sentence This will block most ads on websites, not Brave Private Ads — those are controlled in the Brave Rewards settings. is replaced with This will block most ads on websites.
• Confirmed Extension: Brave Rewards is not present in the Task Manager ( under application menu -> More Tools -> Task Manager)

Step 2 & 3	Step 4	Step 5	Step 6	Step 7	Step 7	Step 8

Other items checked:

• Confirmed no “Rewards” card on NTP
• Confirmed no mention of “Rewards” card on “Customize Dashboard” options

Example	Example

• Confirmed no in-line tip buttons for Reddit, GitHub, Twitter

Example	Example	Example

Logged the below follow up issues: https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/issues/25799 - “Chrome Policies” should be “Brave Policies” https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/issues/25800 - policy name should direct to Brave specific documentation, not general Google/Chrome documentation https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/issues/25807 - Update branding on brave://management page https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/issues/25812 - “Start using Rewards” button is available on “Customize Dashboard” settings under Background Images

[mkarolin]

@mkarolin I have added the key in the REGEDIT as mentioned in the step 2 in the above test plan, after that when I open the brave://rewards I am not seeing the This site can’t be reached error page. Could you look into this and let me know If I’m missing anything here?

@GeetaSarvadnya, instead of creating QWORD (64-bit) value in the registry, please, create a DWORD (32-bit) value.