Since the dawn of the internet, nerds have argued over one thing: which Web Browser should you be using?
Do you use Chrome like everyone does? Are you a Safari bro? A privacy nut on Tor Browser? Are you a crazy terminal browser user? Something else? Let me know, and how off your setup!
I’ll go first: I use Firefox (or LibreWolf, depending on the computer) and keep things pretty stock:
I was using Edge for the past few years but recently switched to Firefox because I’m trying to de-google my life and I’m also interested in using containers to create isolated workspaces
Still think Edge is the better browser but Microsoft is continuing to bloat it up with useless features and stuff I don’t want.
Firefox w/ Privacy Badger & uBlock Origin
Started using Firefox around 2006 because I had a PowerBook, and Safari didn’t work with everything. It was a rough start because the browser didn’t support Apple’s design ideas for Aqua. Camino was a good stopgap. But eventually, the UI was solved, and Firefox finally looked like a Mac OS X app. I kept using the PowerBook and missed out on the initial release of Chrome, and by the time I got a new system that could run Chrome, I didn’t care.
Honestly, I could use Chrome if needed. It doesn’t have any deal breakers yet, but let’s see what happens with the impending add-on apocalypse. The one major Chrome gripe I have is the URL bar. I don’t want it to autofill as I type. That annoys me to no end, and there is no way to disable it. Firefox can disable autofill if you know where to find it in about:config.
I use Chrome so that syncing across Windows desktop and mobile devices is easy.
Pretty much the same on mobile.
was using opera GX for awhile grew tired of it now im using chrome its very nice probably wont switch to anything else unless given a good reason to!
Interesting. Anything stopping you from using another browser that has cross-device syncing?
Never heard of 10ten before. Should try it out as I get back into learning Japanese
It used to be called “Rikaichamp”. Can’t remember why they rebranded.
Anyways, there’s never been a better time to learn Japanese. Anki is great, and you can now pick up manga volumes for as little as $2 each at suruga-ya.com.
If you start now you’ll be able to look back in a few years and be glad you did.
Been using Edge because it syncs everything the easiest across platforms, but really wanting to go back to a FireFox-like. Just difficult. Most of my extensions I need for work don’t work on FireFox at all.
Enjoying Arc on Mac so far and Arc Search on iPhone, but it can’t replace edge. But the separate workspaces have some REALLY neat little QoL bits.
Edge for work, because it just works for all of M365 I encounter daily. A combo of Safari and Arc Browser on my phone. Firefox is always on standby when I need a different’ opinion.
I used to use Firefox and its sync features, even though I think there were glitches from time to time. The main reasons I flipped to Chrome were:
Main reasons I have not considered leaving Chrome:
However, I may reconsider this. Tech businesses over the last year or two, in my view, seem to be changing quickly. They have cut a lot of jobs, dropped support for some features and product lines, and it seems this change in attitude may be the new status quo. I may be interested in splitting up my usage of services, though I doubt it matters in the grand scheme of internet privacy/monitoring.
What kinds of extensions do you rely on?
I guess I prefer Brave by a slight margin over others, but in truth, because of my work, I use Brave, Firefox, Edge and Chrome about equally. I am logged into so many accounts into the same SaaS services and workspaces as well as have to use products that just don’t work in one or more browsers, that it necessitates using them all.
On my personal rig, i keep the plug ins pretty lean. I am using LastPass until the billing cycle is over and will switch to Keeper and that’s about it unless I need to use Chrome, which also has Workspace and I use Camelizer.
I’m currently using Windscribe because they bought out WeVPN and I paid for 3 years right before the folded, and I use Tor fair amount if I need to be private or just want to shed the trackers
The most deal-breaking ones are affiliate link generators and screenshot tools. Use those daily for work, it’s annoying AF to have to switch browsers just for that.
I’m currently playing around with Floorp, basically tModLoader for firefox. I really like the Text-to-speech in the reader view. De-googling in progress…
For extensions, I love sidebery (even though I have to beg CSS wizards* on reddit if I want to customize it), magnolia1234’s “Bypass paywalls clean”, Containers (I think it’s enabled by default now), and everything under the sun to modify youtube. Oh, and the EU mandated “I still don’t care about cookies”. Privacy people seem to like Windscribe, and I like the free tier.
I’ve always had issues with syncing, I gave up on Chrome after an incident. So I was browsing inside a Virtual Machine to avoid leaving traces on my aunt’s PC, but the bare-metal Chrome somehow managed to sync with the one in the VM. On firefox, syncing tries to import the clean install over the one I’m using, usually deleting stuff.
On mobile, they all suck. I used to tell people to use firefox mobile because it used to be able to play youtube with the screen turned off. These days it breaks the audio. I appreciate the efforts to bring more extensions to mobile, but I’m waiting for something based on Servo engine, I heard someone (Igalia, I think?) started work to port it to mobile. Nowadays I use Bromite, because it comes out of the box with my ROM, but that also means I have to wait for a system update for updated adblocker lists…
*I’ve seen many people imitate Arc’s layout.
Quite a toss-up for me. On Mac, I use Arc as primary, Firefox as secondary. On Windows, I use Firefox as primary, arc as secondary. On iOS I bounce between Arc Search (default browser, nice UI), Orion (standard extension support), and Safari (for system-standard features that don’t work in other browsers).
Very likely that when Manifest V3 becomes the only option, I will have to ditch Arc in favor of Firefox (I still want to keep blocking ads esp as they keep getting worse and degrading the internet further), and it will definitely feel like a tough departure given how much I love Arc’s UX.
For work my job is fully integrated into Google Workspace and it works well for everything we need. Given various privacy mishandlings over the years, I don’t actually put anything personal into it. All my passwords etc are enabled by 3rd party integrations.
For personal, I used to use Chrome, but then in an effort to de-Google my life moved over to Opera…only to find out a year later that they’re owned by a Chinese company and their most recent updates are still considered an outdated browser by every website I touch. So now I’m back on Firefox after not touching it since early 2000s.
