Cevilia (they/she/…)When people recommend Brave browser.
pomegranatefernI have been using Brave for its out of the box ad and tracker blocking. I’d been uncomfortable with the new AI features and had always been skeptical of the crypto integration, but it wasn’t until this post that I realized it was appreciably worse than Firefox on those counts, nor how bad the people running it are.
Obviously, I’m now looking for other options. I’ve seen some good recs for desktop browsers elsewhere on this post, but what I’m not seeing is a lot of good mobile browser suggestions that will have the desired features. What would the folks here suggest for an e/OS browsing experience with similar or better privacy and ad blocking options? I know there’s Firefox, but A. With all the AI it keeps pushing, I’m sure there has to be better and B. I do also have mobile Firefox but have found it substantially less usable for my habit of browsing with a zillion tabs both non-incognito and incognito, so I mostly had only been it when I couldn’t get a video to play in Brave.
I am, obviously, willing to run de-Googled Chromium, but if something else is going to actually support 100+ tabs in a performance fashion I’d be happy to totally de-Chromium too.
Firefox (and its forks) have an integrated profile manager, though it’s not always intuitive to figure out how to get to it. LibreWolf is the fork I seem to always go back to, and it has zero slop.
I use containers. Right-click on the new tab button and pick a container to open the tab in. There’s also an add-on that will do this automatically for you when you visit a specific website, so if you want every site to live in its own container, you can do that too.
Personally I just use its built-in cross-site cookie blocking, but multiple ways to do the same thing.
Firefox Multi-Account Containers – Get this Extension for 🦊 Firefox (en-US)
Download Firefox Multi-Account Containers for Firefox. Firefox Multi-Account Containers lets you keep parts of your online life separated into color-coded tabs. Cookies are separated by container, allowing you to use the web with multiple accounts and integrate Mozilla VPN for an extra layer of privacy.
LibreWolf looks promising. No mobile app, but they recommend IronFox for that, so I just downloaded that to play with. Thanks!
KneeTittsLibreWolf
I had soooo many issues with LibreWolf, finally switched to waterfox. If this doesnt pan out, I quit the interweebs
I hope WaterFox pans out for you! Do you mind sharing the issues you had with LibreWolf?
LibreWolf is great once you get yourself onboarded. The onboarding royally sucks. You need to remember that by default LibreWolf is really locked down and it’s on the user to unlock the bits of it they can’t live without. For instance, by default LibreWolf clears its cookies every time you quit, which is great for privacy, but everything’s a tradeoff and that’s too much for me.
stochastictrebuchetI’ve been using Vivaldi (chromium-based) for about three years now. It’s customizable and has been generally solid. Also has a couple of unique tab management features. Doesn’t have builtin ad blocking afaik. But for that I use adguard desktop and route all my traffic through it, which filters out ads regardless of which browser I’m in. On iOS I can recommend Orion by kagi. It’s the only other webkit browser besides Safari, runs light, and has decent builtin ad blocking
Vivaldi does have a built in adblocker but it’s not the best yet.
Cosmonaut_CollinBut it does come with a free tier of proton vpn. Great if you don’t need to use a vpn too often but need one in a pinch.
I wouldn’t trust anything Proton for security or privacy, but that’s a whole can of worms I’m not going to open right now.
Fair point, but as long as you’re not doing anything super illegal it should be okay. I only use the VPN service to torrent movies and tv shows.
Currently trying mobile IronFox. I’m liking the privacy options and how stuff like unlock origin is literally included in the setup process. Their dark mode is nice and they offer a lot of compatibility options.
Two biggest downsides I’m seeing so far (I’ll see about keeping this updated as I go):
There’s an add-on called Dark Reader which may help with number 4. I don’t know if IronFox supports extensions, but that’s the one you probably want.
Got it on both IronFox and LibreWolf. Not perfect, but neither was Brave dark mode. Probably going to have to disable LibreWolf’s anti-fingerprinting feature just so I can tell sites to use dark mode, though.
Also 1. in Brave: Bookmarks and lists, Bookmark manager, three dot menu, Export Bookmarks, save the HTML file on your computer. Then in LibreWolf/IronFox/whatever: Bookmarks, Manage Bookmarks, Import and Backup, Import Bookmarks from HTML, select that file.
I got the export step on my own, but I swear IronFox does not have the Manage Bookmarks option anywhere. Starting to think I’m just going to need to grab a Mozilla account, upload my bookmarks to LibreWolf on desktop, sync bookmarks, and pull them to IronFox that way.
rodneylivesI use Vivaldi as a secondary browser, it’s not been too bad. Firefox is my primary, but I might go to a fork soon.
I have the habit of running Firefox on Android with thousands of tabs (before unloading them into a list on the desktop and cleaning them up). It does slow down somewhat, but not much.