HACKER Q&A
📣 FriedPickles

What browser are you using?


I have Chrome, Brave, Safari, Orion, and FireFox installed, and see merits to all of them. And it feels like I'm hearing of more every day (Mullvad browser, Arc, etc)

I've mostly been using Brave, but it's feeling awfully heavy lately with Brave Rewards, crypto Wallet, Leo AI, etc all built in.

What are you using these days and why?


  👤 cylinder714 Accepted Answer ✓
Firefox! From the day it was released, on Windows, OpenBSD and Android, so that's 19 years? Because I know that everything else, with the exception of textual browsers like elinks and w3m, send telemetry to their masters.

👤 solardev
Just Chrome, signed in and syncing with Google.

I used Firefox from the Phoenix days until maybe 2014-2020 or so, but kept running into rendering and performance issues, especially with canvas. Several of my last few web dev jobs deprecated support for it, so I stopped using it altogether.

The Google tracking stuff doesn't bother me (I find it helpful, actually). But if they ever kill ad blocking, I'll for sure switch away (and probably use that opportunity to exit the Google ecosystem).

Until then, though, Chrome's been fantastic!


👤 wruza
I was using Opera for its UX despite its constant degradation and other well-known matters. The last straw was when they added borders around main webview, so you can’t use “click or scroll aside” action anymore. Switched to Vivaldi and it feels like that old Opera, which I always liked. Why:

- UI settings and behaviors which in other browsers are considered excessive, confusing and inducing panic attacks for a mythical regular user. Pretty ordinary for detailed enumeration, that’s just my workflow and QoL for years.

- Not google.

That’s pretty much it. Popular browser UIs just suck. They are nothing more than a basic shell around a webview and do not feel like you’re using an app. To me they feel like notepad instead of .

I wouldn’t call it not heavy, pretty much the opposite.

I also compared Chrome and Vivaldi on sites I use. The actual speed difference is marginal, but Vivaldi feels slower due to lack of common ui techniques. I don’t mind it cause I know how it works.


👤 anonymouscaller
Primarily Firefox, but once in a while a website will require Chrome, and for that I use Brave. Brave is better than standard Chrome, but like you said, the crypto garbage and useless features are frustrating.

👤 anigbrowl
Vivaldi (from the people who brought you Opera). It's light, robust, nice UI, tweakable. I used to use Brave but don't really trust it since they went down the crypto route.

👤 throwaway318
Firefox. I've used it since Pheonix.

Why not? It's stable, respects privacy and has a thriving ecosystem of plugins.

If a campany's silly enough to make browser-specific websites any more, and some are, I just don't use that company.


👤 marssaxman
Firefox, of course, for many years, on both my computers and my phones. I wish they would make fewer changes, less often, but other than that I am quite content.

People say there are websites which require Chrome, but I never encounter them.

Without uBlock Origin, I would find much of the modern web intolerable.


👤 CM30
Depends on the site. Most of the time it's Firefox due to uBlock Origin and other useful extensions, but for certain sites like YouTube, it's Google Chrome. Every other browser I have installed is for testing purposes.

👤 I_Am_Nous
Firefox since 2006/2007. Safari on iPhone for battery savings but Firefox is there too :)

👤 account-5
Firefox, for nearly the whole time it existed. Never seen a reason to change.

👤 dotcoma
Iridium, because I love bookmarks on Chrome/Chromium, and LibreWolf, which imho is Firefox as it should be, simple and ready out of the box.

And Safari and DDG’s on my phone.


👤 harryquach
At work I use Chrome, because we use Google Meet for meetings which doesn't work well on Firefox. For everything else I use Firefox.

👤 gwnywg
I use FF for daily browsing and Chrome when have to jump on google meet (can't get it working on FF, otherwise I would not use Chrome at all)

👤 Zelphyr
My main driver is Safari. I recently switched from Brave as my main driver simply because of the Sonoma bug in Chrome-based browsers.

👤 runjake
I switch between Firefox, Brave, and Safari on desktop, depending on the week. I don't have Chrome installed on anything.

👤 JohnFen
Firefox, because it's the "least worst" browser I can find.

👤 udfalkso
I tried Arc a few months back and quickly decided to give it a go as a primary browser. It’s quite nice.

👤 sarcasmatwork
Brave and FF on Linux, Windows and an old MBP.

I don't install Chrome anymore.


👤 sp332
Firefox Nightly, although LibreWolf is looking really nice.

👤 tentacleuno
I used plain Chromium (Woolyss builds[1], with the external updater) for around two years [on Windows], even as a frequent browser-hopper. I'd just constantly come back to Chromium (after trying Brave, Firefox, Waterfox, even Edge). Everything else did things I didn't want, and wasted a greater amount of CPU time doing so (like Brave's crypto stuff).

Nowadays I use Firefox and, aside from a few annoying glitches, I'm very happy with it -- for me, the main point of a browser is that most of the time, I shouldn't have to be thinking about it. When I do have to (so, say, for Multiple Containers -- really good feature!), I expect it to provide a great experience.

Firefox generally does, and from my (unscientific testing) it is typically more resource-friendly than Chromium-based browsers (especially those with HTML-based UI addons, think sidebars, etc.)

I certainly don't agree with many of their decisions, but I'd say that they've ultimately succeeded in building a very solid competitor to Chromium. My main disappointment with it is that, as of 2023, it doesn't support PWAs[0]; I remain mindblown that this feature was cancelled.

For the curious, I'm currently utilising the following extensions:

uBlock Origin: The best ad-blocker out there

KeepassXC: Great password manager

Multiple Containers: very useful for isolating data stored by sites across different containers.

Web Scrobbler: for scrobbl... uhh, uploading YouTube [Music] activity to ListenBrainz

Enhancer for Youtube: provides additional functionality for YouTube (like disabling end cards, what a stupid feature)

Return YouTube Dislike: generally required for YouTube IMO

uBlacklist: allows for the blacklisting of URLs from search results; supports DuckDuckGo, Google, and many other search engines

Reddit Enhancement Suite

Old Reddit Redirect: redirects reddit.com to old.reddit.com, makes the experience much less annoying in general

P.S. As an anecdote, pinch to zoom doesn't work for me on Chromium (via X11). Surprising as it may sound, that's an absolute must for me: I use it all the time, so much so that it's very well engrained into muscle memory.

[0]: https://9to5google.com/2021/01/27/firefox-discontinues-work-...

[1]: https://chromium.woolyss.com/


👤 gardenfelder
Firefox, Brave, and Safari.

👤 BOOSTERHIDROGEN
Safari and Orion

👤 slater
Firefox.

Safari is OK, but I have everything in FFox.

Chrome is a no-go because Google nonsense, and Brave is a no-go because crypto nonsense.


👤 navjack27
Edge

👤 jrflowers
WebTV

👤 haebom
arc