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Ask HN: Which web browser do you use and why?

by v7engine on 10/8/22, 2:07 PM with 90 comments

I can't decide between using Librefox and Brave? Librefox because I want to support Firefox and it has first party isolation and Total Cookie Protection. Brave, because, I find it just faster than Firefox. I use ublock origin in both browsers.

  • by jrm4 on 10/8/22, 3:26 PM

    Firefox + uBlock Origin + privacy badger.

    Chromium when some dumb thing forced on me doesn't work for Firefox.

    Pale Moon for when some good thing I really want doesn't work for firefox.

  • by LinuxBender on 10/8/22, 3:06 PM

    Firefox + arkenfox user.js + Custom user.js overrides + Firejail + AppArmor + Iptables

    Firefox at least for now still gives some semblance of control over the browsing experience addons, configurable options, etc... and can be partially hardened using user.js + firejail + apparmor. It is not perfect but I can't force websites to all be 100% compatible with eLinks/Lynx text browsers and the future PipBoy wrist browser. DNS overrides in local Unbound DNS daemon on my firewall/router.

    At times I chain this to a Squid MITM SSL-Bump proxy to get more control over client/server headers but more and more sites give me captchas when I originate from a server/vps provider.

    The one missing piece for me is having full control over the NetworkID in about:networking -> Network ID.

  • by mindcrime on 10/8/22, 3:01 PM

    Mostly Firefox, at least on desktop. On mobile, mostly Chrome, although I just made it a point to re-install Firefox on my phone so I could give the latest version a try.

    Why? Well in the desktop case, FF and Chrome work about equally as well in general, but I have a bias towards using OSS software, plus Firefox seems at least a little bit more interested in privacy. And also just to do my tiny part to help avoid the web becoming a complete Chrome controlled mono-culture.

  • by jqpabc123 on 10/8/22, 2:30 PM

    Brave. Simply because it is fast, efficient and offers good privacy by default. It is available on every platform I use and has shareable bookmarks.

  • by fcoury on 10/8/22, 3:43 PM

    I have been using Orion [1] almost exclusively for the past 2-3 months with almost zero issues. Also switched to kagi as my search engine with similar success.

    I just love the idea behind them and want to support a Google alternative.

    —

    [1] https://browser.kagi.com/

  • by olvy0 on 10/8/22, 2:20 PM

    Firefox, with ublock origin, and set to never remember history - cleaning all cookies when I close the browser. I remember all the relevant passwords. Very fast and very stable for me. That said I don't open many tabs. When tabs go over a certain threshold I just close those I haven't read yet.

    A while ago I went over the list of Librefox modifications, and decided I didn't really care if Mozilla had that information about me <shrug>.

    I tried Brave but didn't like it. Something just didn't click. Looked too much like Chrome, and I don't like Chrome.

  • by lyptt on 10/8/22, 3:22 PM

    Currently Orion since that gets me Safari + Ublock Origin. It's a little janky at the moment, but it's nice having Ublock back.

  • by Comevius on 10/8/22, 2:34 PM

    Firefox with arkenfox user.js. Librefox doesn't seem to be maintained, and it has no purpose other than pre-packaging what you can do yourself better in a second by enabling privacy.resistFingerprinting.

    Brave doesn't give a hoot about privacy, they just pretend to hear your voice, because privacy and cryptocurrencies are what makes them different from their competitors, otherwise they are an ad company like any other. They are totally not paying for their positive media coverage.

    Neither browser, or any browser is trully private, they leak like the sieve, but the best approach to privacy is not to stop the leaks, but to leak fake data, which is something only the Tor browser and Firefox with privacy.resistFingerprinting tries to do.

    First party isolation is bullshit, it breaks many sites and it makes your browser stand out. I recommend containers.

  • by fermigier on 10/8/22, 3:21 PM

    Firefox, with Ublock Origin and NextDNS activated.

  • by taxcoder on 10/8/22, 3:05 PM

    Firefox, for the illusion of privacy it provides over Chrome, without requiring much effort on my part.

  • by joemasilotti on 10/8/22, 3:36 PM

    Safari because it syncs my passwords and tabs with my iPhone. And because I do native iOS development with embedded web views - which you can only debug with Safari.

  • by Yizahi on 10/9/22, 7:52 PM

    Firefox. Because on Windows PC there are essentially 2 browsers left, Chrome and Firefox.

    I also don't really get the hate for Firefox (except for the most recent trends of googlificating it). I was using it since beta< and tries Chrome on three separate occasions (for month). It wasn't more functional or faster. It just lagged in a different way at different times.

  • by iLoveOncall on 10/8/22, 3:33 PM

    Chrome, because it's better integrated with the rest of the Google products that I use like Drive, on multiple devices.

    But I'll make the switch to Firefox if adblockers stop working well on Chrome.

    I'll never use Brave because of its affiliation with cryptocurrency and their history of injecting their own referral links to people going on Binance.

    All the other ones are just honestly subpar.

  • by SAI_Peregrinus on 10/8/22, 3:53 PM

    Firefox.

    Tree-Style Tabs, uBlock Origin, Multi-Account Containers, Temporary Containers, and Containerise are the 5 "essential" addons I care about. If another browser could replicate the same functionality as those, I'd consider switching, but none of them yet can.

    Chrome for the cases where something doesn't work in Firefox.

  • by kkfx on 10/8/22, 4:34 PM

    I use Firefox because it's the LESS proprietary of modern WebVM "featured" enough to use modern web(cr)applications.

    It feel less fluid and less comfortable for some aspects than WebKit-based WebVM monsters, but it's still enough, it allow vertical tabs (tab center reborn + custom CSS to hide the tab-bar), it feature a decrappyfier (Firefox Reader) to being able to read most once-called websites in text without too much crap, still allow a decent ad blocking/tracking blockers.

    I would prefer Chromium on Brave simply because it's better being in well-known devils hands instead of in devils dressed as angels hands. For similar reasons I do not have used (beside few tests) Opera nor old nor new in the past.

  • by jtthe13 on 10/8/22, 3:57 PM

    Unpopular opinion: Microsoft Edge. Chromium engine renders everything, compatible with all Chrome extensions. Login with work account gives quick access to all my docs. Not fancy but reliable.

  • by Vanit on 10/10/22, 1:53 AM

    Looks like we got the entire Firefox userbase in this thread.

  • by anandrmedia on 10/8/22, 2:23 PM

    I use Safari on my mac, because it doesn't make my system slow

  • by haunter on 10/8/22, 3:43 PM

  • by javn on 10/8/22, 2:47 PM

    Vivaldi with ublockorigin and other privacy-related extensions.

  • by janlukacs on 10/8/22, 3:30 PM

    Safari - very fast, minimal UI + great battery life on laptops

  • by yogthos on 10/8/22, 4:33 PM

    Firefox here because it works well and I think it's important to have at least two independent browser engine implementations. If Chromium ends up being the only engine around then the web protocols will basically be whatever Chromium does. We've already lived through this nightmare with IE controlling the whole market.

  • by alphabettsy on 10/8/22, 3:52 PM

    Safari and Firefox for personal, Chrome for work.

    Safari because it’s fast and efficient. Firefox for add-ons and development.

    Chrome for work and development.

  • by dheera on 10/8/22, 3:34 PM

    Chrome + uBlock Origin (plugin) + User JavaScript and CSS (plugin)

    I want to like Firefox but every time I try it I run into some nitpick bug and go back to Chrome. I just tried it 2 minutes ago and the scrolling was hyper fast compared to Chrome, at least 5x the speed, it was not easy to control where I was on a page. Oh well, back to Chrome ...

  • by adamfarhadi on 10/8/22, 3:42 PM

    Firefox with uBlock Origin most of the time, but I’ll sometimes use Chrome as well. I live in Sweden but I’m not a native Swedish speaker and Chrome’s webpage translation feature works quite well if I need to quickly translate some legalese or anything with language that is more advanced than the colloquial written language.

  • by M4v3R on 10/8/22, 3:25 PM

    For few weeks I’m using Arc browser on Mac, which is currently in closed beta. It’s a really good chromium based browser that brings several nice and fresh idea to the browser world. I especially like the idea of spaces (that can also be totally isolated from each other) and having a sidebar instead of the usual top bar.

  • by BigElephant on 10/8/22, 3:25 PM

    Microsoft Edge. The built in TTS is amazing.

  • by solardev on 10/8/22, 5:13 PM

    Chrome, because it just works. Firefox is too slow with the apps we're developing due to having terrible Canvas performance. Bug reports on that stretch back years with no fixes. Also, it keeps bombarding me with useless ads.

    Safari is fine but it doesn't offer any tangible benefit over Chrome.

  • by soundnote on 10/11/22, 3:26 PM

    Brave. Does what I need and has nice features like background YouTube playback and Chromium niceties like PWAs. Looking forward to vertical tabs, which they seem to be working on.

  • by robalni on 10/8/22, 2:25 PM

    I use w3m (it doesn't have a graphical interface) as much as possible because I got tired of the complexity of the web. It's also much faster than Firefox; it loads pages instantly while in Firefox there is always a small delay.

    When I have to, I use Firefox.

  • by iamwil on 10/8/22, 3:39 PM

    Firefox. Mostly for privacy. It's fast enough for most things. Never had much issue with it. Only time I look at Chrome is some demo on WebGL, or if I have to verify that "it's not the browser".

  • by helij on 10/8/22, 8:49 PM

    Firefox since inception on multiple operating systems. Netscape before.

    It's good enough and it just works. I never really had any issues to make me look for more.

    I regularly use other browsers but live in Firefox.

  • by timeon on 10/8/22, 5:16 PM

    Most of the time Safari and Firefox for testing on other browser.

  • by ShaverSport on 10/8/22, 4:40 PM

    Qutebrowser for the keyboard driven navigation. Its backed by chrome, instead of Firefox unfortunately (I'd prefer there to be multiple browser engines out there).

  • by papascrubs on 10/10/22, 8:29 PM

    Edge. Best Vertical Tabs implementation. Basically Chrome. Don't act like FF/Chrome don't already eat your data.

  • by spaniard89277 on 10/8/22, 3:31 PM

    Firefox, my daily driver. It's nice.

    Vivaldi and Chrome. For the dev tools, although vivaldi sometimes injects styles and drives me crazy.

    Brave when I want to go onto onion stuff.

  • by vulcan01 on 10/9/22, 1:20 AM

    Firefox + uBO + Sidebery + custom userChrome.css, for vertical tab trees and great integration with Firefox's account containers.

  • by lousken on 10/8/22, 8:55 PM

    firefox - because of tampermonkey custom scripts. I run js disabled by default(using old version of tampermonkey with umatrix to turn off js by default) + i can be sure ublock origin keeps working + custom theme w/ tree style tab which chrome can't handle + dark reader synced with my current system theme which changes based on f.lux state (day/night)

  • by dmd on 10/8/22, 3:30 PM

    Chrome, because it works with our corporate apps, and Firefox and Safari both don't, and I'm on Google Workspace anyway.

  • by wizzerking on 10/8/22, 3:33 PM

    Right now use Brave and Vivaldi, because they do not crash my Linux System Currently FireFox Causes a Crash of Linux Mint

  • by syntaxing on 10/8/22, 3:29 PM

    Firefox container is easily the best feature out of any browser. I love being able to isolate everything in categories.

  • by 2Gkashmiri on 10/8/22, 3:30 PM

    firefox+ublock+ pihole (using localcdn for fun but i don't know)

    for the most part, i used "browser.privatebrowsing.autostart=true" for like the last decade i think but i keep one window open for stuff that i has 2fa and stuff... for regular browsing, i just do CTRL+SHIFT+P and work on this, all day everyday

  • by out_of_protocol on 10/9/22, 5:01 AM

    Ungoogled chromium on desktop,

    Opera on Android - because text reflow is super useful (make text fit screen on any zoom)

  • by diebeforei485 on 10/8/22, 3:35 PM

    Safari.

    I do have Firefox installed as well. Typically if some website doesn't work in Safari, it works in Firefox...

  • by Saphyel on 10/8/22, 3:48 PM

    Team Firefox here. It's great for devs, privacy and it's quite fast.

    At work I'm force to use Chrome

  • by gtsop on 10/9/22, 11:23 PM

    Have been happily using librewolf for over a year now. 100% suggested to friends

  • by qbasic_forever on 10/8/22, 3:32 PM

    Firefox or Fenix (FF build on fdroid) on Android with ublock origin is just amazing.

  • by isatty on 10/8/22, 3:30 PM

    Firefox on personal non mobile devices, safari on mobile devices.

    Chrome for work.

  • by smitty1e on 10/8/22, 4:02 PM

    FF because it keeps all the bookmarks tidy across platforms.

  • by jesuslop on 10/8/22, 3:44 PM

    In Android Firefox Nightly, it supports adding extensions.

  • by dotcoma on 10/8/22, 3:01 PM

    Chromium-based Iridium on my Mac and Safari on my phone.

  • by tommica on 10/8/22, 3:34 PM

    Waterfox, because too much google is not good for you

  • by 28304283409234 on 10/8/22, 10:36 PM

    Firefox. Awesomebar and Containers.

  • by decibe1 on 10/9/22, 4:11 AM

    Edge + ublock

  • by hackerbrother on 10/8/22, 3:31 PM

    Chrome, because I am a pawn of American hypercapitalism. :(