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That's a Brave (mis)feature, I tested and it works for me alt-tabbed out on Firefox.

It's a general problem for Chromium-based browsers. I also experience this with Vivaldi. It has something to do with the tabs sleeping.

Yeah has to be it.

Incidentally, Brave Search also has a timer widget.

This timer works well on Firefox. It has no issues with network unreliability or time changes.