What browser do you use on your PC/Mac?

rippersnapper@lemm.ee to Asklemmy@lemmy.ml – 139 points –

Since currently Lemmy is mostly made up of nerds, I'd like to know what browsers you use and why? You could just upvote the comment with your browser of choice if you don't want to explain.

188

Firefox

An established foundation with good interests and goals running it (unfortunately it's not quite that clear cut - but the best, closest). The source of free software development. Extensive feature set. Robustness.

I haven't seen the need to use a fork, and like and prefer the idea of using and supporting the one that's investing in the engine development - even if it's largely only through free use. (Using forks does not support them this way.)

When briefly using chrome dev tools I've always preferred and went back to Firefox dev tools for web development.

Sharing my data with an independent org like Mozilla feels much better and safer than with Google. The services are free software and could be replaced if it ever need be. Still, Mozilla is big enough to expect stability across time.

Tech wise there's not much difference between the three big players Firefox, Chrome, and Edge.

If it weren't Firefox I'd feel more comfortable with Edge than Chrome.

If Firefox isn't available, the next best choice would probably be de-googled Chromium (note that Chromium is not necessarily fully de-googled by default) or Safari. Edge is just Chrome plus Microsoft.

Edge is just Chrome plus Microsoft.

Notably minus the Google integration though. Replacing one big corp for another.

I think Edge still has a bunch of the Google telemetry, though. But I could be wrong - I haven't looked into it because Firefox exists. Firefox also has some Google telemetry kinda stuff by default, just in case you didn't know - you have to disable it (or bear with it because you want the features)

I think they replace pretty much all of it, even standbys like Safe Browsing are replaced with a Microsoft equivalent.

I've found de googled chromium kinda sucks though, PWAs seem unstable and Chromecast doesn't work properly

That's always the trade-off - convenience, or privacy? It seems that we live in a world where we can't really get both, and everyone has their personal preference on where that line should be drawn.

True, I'd rather support Firefox as a browser and an organisation. Edge for pages that work best with Chromium engine

Firefox. I used to be an avid Chrome user, but the domination of Chromium-based browsers (Chrome, Edge, Brave, Opera, Vivaldi, etc) is scary. It essentially gives Google control over what happens on the internet. So I switched to Firefox and it's been a great browser ever since

Unfortunately Google control Firefox too 😐

In what way?

They pay Mozilla between 83-86% of their yearly revenue to be the default search engine.

That's where basically all Mozilla's funding comes from.

If Google decides they want their competition gone, they just turn off the money pipe. They are at their mercy.

Edit: here's an interesting article I found with a quick search. I'm sure there are more.

Mozilla can't fail. if it does, chrome will be a monopoly and the law disallows that strictly.

at least where i live.

If that's why Google is paying them, to keep them alive, then they're effectively a puppet

Librewolf, because it's a hardened version of Firefox

Can elaborate on what that means for a dummy like me

LibreWolf doesn't have the privacy invasive pocket extension out of the box, and instead comes with UBlock origin. It disables Google safe browsing, because Google, and denies canvas access to websites by default. It also disables the Mozilla telemetry that's enabled by default in vanilla Firefox.

Firefox. It's better, IMO, to follow a process of how to manually harden it because then you know how to allow exclusions to the hardening when things go wrong.

Firefox. I've always used Firefox except for services that don't support it (like GeForce Now, which I do have Chrome installed for). I'd say my main reason for sticking with it is wanting to support a more "open web" concept. I also use it on mobile in order to get adblock there and appreciate the browser sync.

Librewolf, basically Firefox but more privacy, I did tweak some settings for usability which may have made it a bit less private though

Firefox, because it's simply the right choice. And also because it integrates well into my everything.

Firefox all day. Been using it since the early 2000s

Firefox with a load of plugins. Mostly adblockers, cookie blockers, and one that automatically runs through the dark patterns that are cookie prompts and rejects all the cookies it can.

one that automatically runs through the dark patterns that are cookie prompts and rejects all the cookies it can.

What extension is this?

Firefox on pc and mobile. I like the extensions and I like that the Mozilla foundation is a non profit trying to improve the internet.

Firefox.

It's the only browser which can give me certain very simple behaviours. For example, noise the bookmark toolbar a lot. And I want bookmarks from that toolbar to automatically open in a new tab when I left-click on them. Firefox can give me that, whereas Chrome and most Chromium-based browsers don't even give me the option. I have to middle-click or ctrl-click, otherwise that bookmark mercilessly opens over my current tab. Could I teach myself a new habit (middle-click instead of left-click in the bookmark bar)? Sure. Should I have to?

The only Chromium browser that was able to give me this behaviour is Vivaldi, and that had a whole lot of other problems.

The other killer Firefox feature is tab containers. Wouldn't want to go another day without them.

Firefox on Mac and PC syncronized.

  • Clear Cache
  • ClearURLs
  • DownThemAll
  • DuckDuckGo Privacy Essentials
  • Enhancer for YouTube
  • FrankerFaceZ (for twitch)
  • Print Friendly & PDF
  • Proton Pass
  • Tampermonkey
  • uBlock Origin
  • iCloud Bookmarks
  • Facebook Container
  • Firefox Multi-Account Containers (for work)

Safari on my iPhone / iPad.

The moment Firefox on iOS/iPadOS gets to use it’s own engine and run it’s own extensions I’m swapping to that, though.

Take a look at vinegar / baking soda as an extension for safari. It replaces the non-standard video players on websites like YouTube with a plain HTML5 player. Much smoother and you get all the iOS / macOS features like scrubbing and PiP. Plus it blocks ads as well!

I shall have a look at that! Peculiar names, though. :D

Firefox at the moment, but every so often I get fed up with its performance and switch to Chrome. Won't happen anytime soon at the moment, due to the Mv3 shit they are pulling off though

1 more...

Firefox - bookmark side bar is still the only reason I can’t use chrome (besides issues with privacy et al)

Firefox, always have been Firefox for me.

Firefox on my desktop, Fennec on my phone

Is Fennec just the old name, orn something different?

I use Firefox on Windows and Firefox on Android.

Fennec is built from source on fdroid and has proprietary bits like the Google cloud messaging (push notifications) and widevine DRM removed.

Yeah it's great apart from you can't use 2 factor hardware backed keys like yubi on it. That library is stripped out. That's why I had to move back to FF Beta on android.

Any reason Fennec and not Mull? Just curious.

Mull doesnt scroll with 90hz for some reason

You have to set privacy.resistFingerprinting to "false". If you have another extension to make up for that, minus the refresh rate inhibition, you should be fine.

I've been using Firefox as my main browser since it was called Phoenix. When I was 17 back in 2004 I put up flyers in my hometown to advertise its release. I'm never switching browsers.

Same here! Before that, I used initially Netscape, then Konqueror on KDE, whose engine KHTML became the foundation of Safari/Webkit and thereby 90% of all browsers nowadays and only started in 2006 or so to exclusively use Firefox.

Recently switched from brave to Firefox+ublock mobile and PC.

Any list of suggested extensions?

Libredirect if you are interested in private frontends to youtube, twitter and such

Violentmonkey if you want to automate websites

Singlefile

Firefox multi-account containers (yes this is an addon), and temporary containers

Bitwarden

Translate Web Pages

I don't use many extensions, but those two are useful.

I like Keepa to track prices on Amazon and set alerts for deals. It's nice since it embeds a chart directly within Amazon product pages. I haven't reviewed their privacy policy for a while though (last time was a few years ago) so I don't know how much data they collect and for what purpose.

Bitwarden changed my Life for the Better

I switched from LastPass last year... Should have done it much earlier. I switch before LastPass' data breach but unfortunately I didn't delete my LastPass account until after the data breach.

if you use YouTube, deArrow and sponsorBlock.

sidebery to have vertical tree style tabs. use the beta from the GitHub page, they rewrote everything from v4 and v5 and v5 is way better.

Arc (only on Mac for now), still not completely mature but I hope they improve performance and stability in the future, as the core ideas are pretty great

Their spaces, pinned tabs and splitted views really make for a great experience

Also a fan of Arc. When I first started using it a year ago I thought it would be temporary but it quickly became my primary browser

Until recently, chrome. Recently I started experimenting with Firefox and qutebrowser.

I used FF for a long time then chrome because of how much was deved for it. Now I'm trying to switch back to FF, but getting out of the chrome eco system is such a pain in the ass

Personally had an ok switch. My biggest issue was auto completions. Which was solved with Bitwarden.

I need to just bite the bullet and deal with the swap, as chrome has gotten worse and worse over the years

Firefox whenever possible, and Brave when a page is broken in firefox.

Firefox, have it since I switched to it from the Mozilla suite.

Firefox. Moved because of the Manifest V3 changes around November 2022

w3m on a vt terminal connected to a headless netbsd box.

Firefox, but I wanted to give a nerdier answer.

better yet - lynx on a tty terminal running on an LFS VM, with all the devices using hardware passthrough, and a gentoo host machine.

For reference, I am also using firefox

another one for Firefox. I use it on PC and Android too, tho it has some issues and bugs on mobile. But I don't care.

Not Chrome. Not Edge. Not Brave.

Chrome is tied too closely to Google. I don’t trust Google with my data because their business model is all about monetizing anything you give them. It’s also always been bloated and slow on the Mac.

It’s a shame because when Edge first came out, it was great. Now it’s a bloated dumping ground of privacy-invading featuritis.

Brave recently had a bunch of privacy/monetization controversies that put me off of it as well.

That leaves me with Firefox and Safari.

Vivaldi seems interesting, but so far I haven’t seen any performance differences between it and Safari. Thought I’d give it a try to see how well it worked on an older Mac, but it was missing webp support there, just like Safari.

Mac: Firefox is my primary, Edge for things that don't work in Firefox, Safari for things that don't work in Edge.

PC: Firefox and Edge.

Same here. Edge gets a lot of bad rep, but I still prefer that over Chrome or Brave (due to its affiliation with crypto)

🔥 🦊

Same, because it's a good browser and because of their commitment to an open internet.

I keep telemetry enabled (it can be perused openly on telemetry.mozilla.org if interested).

I'm a total browser slut.

At work, I use Firefox as my main browser. I had been using Edge to access the Chromium rendering engine, but I've recently switched over to Arc.

At home, I recently exchanged Safari for Orion and Edge for Arc, with Firefox for when I work from home.

I used to have Opera installed for times when a VPN came in handy.

All on Mac

LibreWolf, which is a fork of Firefox focused on privacy

Firefox developer edition.

Switched to that because of chrome's manifest v3 announcement.

Firefox, been using it on my PC as long as I've had one. Been forced to use Chrome, I.E & Edge on work computers and don't fancy them particularly.

firefox on desktop, safari on mobile

Firefox. Developer edition, to be specific.

Home pc: Vivaldi

Phone: Vivaldi

Work pc: Vivaldi + Firefox

Edit: i really liked the old Opera browser (12.16 and prior or whatever), and Vivaldi is the closest to that

The og Opera was so good and innovative. Would've paid for it (when it was still ad-supported), were I not a poor student at the time.

When they became yet another chromium skin with no soul, I moved fully to FF. Now Vivaldi is my second browser alongside FF.

Yea the OG one was really good and used that for many years. haven't tried the new one, but afaik they got bought by some Chinese company around the time they switched to chromium

Vivaldi on laptop, Orion on iPhone — but as of last week Orion is crashing multiple times a day (after months of use without issues).

Firefox, but Vivaldi seems cool and I might start using it in on mobile.

Moved from Edge to Firefox and back to Edge a few days later. FF "works" but I prefer the less clicks requiring Edge UI. The faster bookmarking, the better vertical tabs (though you can kind of get it to work with verticalFox css). Edge loads faster and handling drag and drop of tabs and better website translation. FF also had performance issues on some websites. Another is, Edge bookmark icon remembers my click, while FF UI always resets.

I use a combination of desktop and android and FF android really isn't good with it's UI, it would require many more clicks to save 10 bookmarks inside my desktop folders and much longer to sync them. While on Edge it was two touch and instant sync.

I'd say FF is fine for 99% if the people but I was looking for something else. I did this just a few days ago.

You are literally the first person I have ever seen that prefers edge over any other browser. I knew there were some of you out there somewhere... Thanks for sharing your experience.

for vertical tabs give a try to sidebery, but use the latest beta from GitHub releases.

Yeah I used that. It was okay. I prefer the way how I can drag and drop the tabs in Edge. Sidebery didn't seam to habe that option. Also when you were on bookmarks you couldn't open a folder with one click (Middle mouse button). It also didn't automatically switch back to tabs from bookmarks when opening more than an individual bookmark. Saving bookmarks also didn't remember the folder. It's tiny stuff that made me go back to Edge.

I use orion on Mac and it works well 99% of the time.

Vivaldi. I use Firefox too, but I love the mouse gestures and other features.

I moved to Firefox on desktop years ago.

On mobile I use Firefox as default, Cromite if something does not work on Firefox, Kiwi Browser as backup.

Firefox and Kiwi Browser on mobile is a bit sluggish and slow on my phone.

For work I use Safari, for fun I use Firefox, and for anything that demands I use Chrome I use Chrome.

Firefox.

I'm so happy to see that almost everyone here uses Firefox or a fork of it!

Firefox running under native wayland for smooth scrolling and with apz.overscroll.enabled set to true. The best experience on Linux.

Recently moved from Librewolf to Floorp (also based on Firefox). It is at least worth checking out I’d say, especially if you’re on Vivaldi specifically because you can’t find something which competes in customisation, workspaces, and sidebars and all.

I want to use Firefox, but I'm too used to vertical tabs and the plugins available for Firefox aren't quite there yet, so Brave it is.

try the latest beta of sidebery. directly from the GitHub page.

Floorp. It's a Firefox fork with good privacy and security, but not as intrusive as Librewolf and doesn't break websites by default

Vivaldi. For me, in terms of usability, it's the closest thing to Opera (and by "Opera" I mean the browser that it was before moving to Blink/Chromium).

When X breaks, i use Lynx.

Firefox for personal. I like Edge for work stuff.

Brave, thinking about using firefox, and degoogle more

Brace or safari

Safari when I’m on my phone and a page won’t load in brave

Desktop:

Mullvad browser as daily driver (Firefox + Arkenfox + Tor Browser + ublock origin out of the box)

Degoogled chromium for any logged in accounts, each in its own profile (I prefer the chrome profile switcher)

Tor Browser for any onion sites

Mobile:

Mull (Firefox)

Brave on both.

  • Native vertical tabs +1
  • tablet UIs
  • scrolling velocity doesn't feel non-native

Would like to revisit Firefox once those are fixed.

vertical tabs are managed by extensions. i used tree style tab, now i'm using sidebery.

if you want to use sidebery, use the beta from the GitHub page. they completely rewrote the extension between v4 and v5

Still requires custom css which annoys me, doesn't feel as good as native impl.

Brave. It got better privacy ratings than Firefox and I really like the design.

> browser that's based on Chromium and got caught editing referral links into URLs got a better privacy rating than Firefox

You've been lied to lol

He's not lying. Mutiple tests around net agree that OUT OF THE BOX it's the most secure browser.

It may nominally have more secure defaults than Firefox (although I doubt it's better in the areas that matter.)

The problem is that the creators have demonstrated (by secretly injecting referral/affiliate links into URLs, and also by being crypto shills) that they are entirely untrustworthy. In a piece of software as security and privacy critical as a browser, such behavior is unacceptable.

Wow your argument is if you enabled the optional ads there are privacy issues? Why would you do that anyway?

On desktop, Librewolf (Firefox) and Brave. Sometimes I need a Chromoum browser (thanks Google), and Brave is one of the better options.

On iOS, it doesn’t really matter. Though, I went with Brave. Ad blocking and background media playback is great.

On Android I use Mull, which is a hardened Firefox, with goals similar to Librewolf. Again, Brave as a backup.

Mac - Opera main, Safari secondary, + Brave for free YouTube.

At home, Firefox. At work: Chrome because I'm a web developer and our app is currently broken in Firefox

Google Chrome because I'm hooked on extension syncing and have had poor experiences with Firefox. I'll reevaluate once Manifest v2 is sunsetted.

I've never had an issue with Firefox extension sync. Is it something like extension settings not getting synced? I've never paid attention to those.

For Firefox I'm moreso concerned about performance issues that I've run into with certain sites, as well as apprehension surrounding Mozilla (though Google is DEFINITELY not any better). Extension syncing (and general setting syncing, for that matter) mostly comes into play when I try to use something like LibreWolf or Ungoogled Chromium. I love the latter, but it's painful to have to manually sync my extension changes across devices. At least I can do bookmarks with xBrowserSync, but I'm SoL for everything else. 😭

Librefox (a Firefox fork) or if I really just don't want to use that for sites like fandom, I can always rely on the text based Links browser to save the day.

I usually stick to the browser that comes bundled with the OS. On my computer, I use Microsoft Edge, and on my phone I use Chrome. I'm just very lazy to download a different browser, I'm not biased at all. If I start using Linux, I'll be using Firefox (idk if different Linux distros bundle different browsers). If I ever switch to iOS or macOS, I'd use Safari.

I think I'm automatically being hated now for using a browser made by a company that sells my data to advertisers.

Brave on laptop and on phone. I tried to switch to Firefox recently but too many little things bugged me. I still have Firefox on my phone for when something doesn't work in Brave (like free movies on Southwest flights).

Safari for daily driver. Firefox for backup. Mullvad for the old site.

I’m on MacOS, and I tend to mostly use 3 for different reasons.

Safari has been my goto for battery, but Firefox has caught up. I may hop over in MacOS 14. My big sticking point has been integration with Apple’s keychain software, and that should change during the next major OS update.

Chrome for stupid g suite products that disable features for other browsers (aka, Google’s video chat)

Edge for free access to GPT 4.

Mullvad and Brave on desktop. Vanadium and Cromite/Brave on Android.

Orion (when it works 99% of the time) on my Mac. It’s pretty much all the benefits of Safari plus the ability to run some Firefox/Chrome extensions. I know it’s not FOSS yet, but they at least claim to be working on it. Firefox for the other websites that don’t work on Orion (very rare), and Chrome for the others that don’t work well at all on Orion/Firefox (almost never). I’m planning on deleting Chrome overall soon.

Edge. I hardly use my PC for any actual browsing other than torrent sites.

Want to get into Nyxt. Hackable in common lisp! But for me on Guix it crashes within 5 minutes of use. Damn I need to fix it.

eww. (built into emacs). Used to google issues during terminal distro installations. Also good for simple blogs and github readme's, but I plan to replace that with a feed reader and a proper forge explorer package.

But as a depressed gamer, I've been sticking to firefox so far.

Chrome for development (because our customers use that) and Safari for iOS/Firefox for personal usage

Keep going back to Chrome, but back on Firefox. The problem is all the webpages Firefox tends to break unfortunately :(

Maybe I never notice because I don't chrome, but what sites? I've never seen an issue.

Even yesterday, a jpg to svg conversion site, and meetup.com (where editing an event instead of returning to the event just showed a webpage with a random word).

I want Firefox to succeed though (I've been using it since early betas and even donated when they were doing the newspaper ad near the beginning)

I guess I just write the site off as broken (because it is) and move on.

i use ff for most stuff. if a site breaks and i really want to open it, i spin up chrome and open the site there.

That's what I'm trying to avoid though. Firefox is slightly slower, and I don't want to keep both browsers installed

why not?

if a site does not work on ff there is a site you can report it too.

also, i have ff with ublock and other stuff that edit the web page, some web pages do not like it, so i fall back to chrome.

my chrome is stock, no extensions, no account, no sync. i only open it for very specific purposes.

But.. I guess the real consideration, is why?

The reality is, the Mozilla CEO gets paid $5million a year. Although, I do respect that she was apparently there since the beginning

What benefit do I get for bug testing their browser? Why wouldn't I just use Chrome (which is also mostly open source anyway), which is fully compatible, and is still faster, and doesn't require me to submit sites on a regular basis?

They do have some interesting ideas, but a $3-$5mil salary for the CEO I feel could hire a lot of developers.

On the privacy front, don't forget that they are paid 500million by Google anyway, for google to be the default browser (same as they do with Apple). So, they have incentive not to step on Googles feet.

Not in the habit of providing you data, thanks. Our browser choice is none of your business.