dark reader. It’s not perfect but I get most sites in a usable dark mode.
That’s mostly it.
Same, all you really need. Maybe also password manager extensions for the added phishing protection
Yeah, I didn't include my Enpass extension, as it's more like a plug-in.
I also excluded TamperMonkey because I solely use it to sell my Steam cards and become filthy rich. Already 34 cents into my first million.
And last but not least: an extension that auto-upvotes YT videos from my subscribed channels because I'm too lazy to do it manually and YT can't be bothered to assign a key to it.
Sponsorblock for YouTube.
Javascript disabler to get around many paywalls.
In my testing, dark reader made sites load much slower. Anyone else notice this?
Dark Reader is entirely client side, so it shouldn't affect load times.
Render times may increase significantly though depending on cpu((/gpu?).
Yes, I suppose if their computer is a decade or two old, it might have an impact on their render times.
it can make my google drive stuff take a couple extra seconds to realize whats happening
Nope, still fast on my machines
This is my experience as well. Noticable slowdown after installing it. But IMO, it's still worth it.
In my experience enabling some of the annoyance lists broke several websites and it took a while to realise why. I do use the cookie consent list but no longer use any annoyance lists.
Firefox Multi-Account Containers
It does have some rather specific use cases but if you need it it’s amazing. Way better than chrome profiles imo
this!
Bypass Paywalls Clean is fantastic, need to install from xpi though
lol that installation was crazy simple! thanks!!
Also any sort of privacy redirector, specifically to go to nitter instead of xitter, is a must have
If you habitually have a lot of tabs open, you'll probably know how annoying it is finding things when each page title has been condensed down to 4-5 characters. On widescreen displays (especially 16:9), vertical pixels are also a lot more precious, while horizontal ones are plentiful.
For me (3840×2160 display, 200% scale), its vertical tab sidebar fits about 30 tabs before needing a scrollbar, and you get a full width title for each and every one.
It can be a bit of an adjustment at first, but I've been using this since the pre-WebExtensions days (since around Firefox 4.0), it's definitely one of my must-haves.
This changed my habitual way of working with browsers for the better, can't recommend it enough. I'm using Sidebery though, not sure of the differences, but I really like its snapshot feature.
Can't recommend TreeStyleTabs enough!
Not only does it trade off precious vertical space for plentiful horizontal space, but also the tabs get organized hierarchical, so when searching and opening multiple tabs , the tabs get grouped naturally
If you like Tree Style Tabs I'd also recommend trying Sideberry. Does the same thing but has some additional functionality.
First of all, install Betterfox, it is not an extension per se, but a set of custom settings. Betterfox offers a lot of fixes, including removed Mozilla telemetry, increased speed, smooth scrolling, privacy protections, etc.
I believe, Betterfox can also be used on Floorp (In case their website doesn't work, here's a Github link - https://github.com/Floorp-Projects), which is a Firefox-based browser with Vivaldi/Opera-like interface. Sounds neat, but i didn't really test it yet.
In case you feel too lazy to install Betterfox/Arkenfox/other user.js modifications, you can use Librewolf instead. It is a version of Firefox with bundled Arkenfox and uBlock Origin.
If configuring Redirector is too confusing for you, you can use LibRedirect, it can automatically redirect YouTube to Invidious and Piped, Fandom to Breezewiki, Google to SearX, Twitter to Nitter, and so on, so you won't have to bother with popups and ads.
For password managers, use Bitwarden, if you want to have your passwords synced in the cloud, or KeepassXC, if you want to store them locally.
Block The Rich is a fun little extension for those who are tired of reading billionaire spam, but i did not test it.
Instance Assistant Is made to improve Lemmy and Kbin experience, but, once again, i did not test it.
Also, do not use Google, Bing, Yandex or Brave as your search engine, instead switch to DuckDuckGo, Mojeek, and 4Get or SearX
Why disable telemetry?
Originally, i too, have thought that Mozilla's telemetry would be limited to only technical aspects, such as crash reports. I mean, they are using privacy as their main selling point. But of course, that was a lie. Read this. You may think that only Spyware Watchdog and Dig Deeper dislike Mozilla, but no. By searching around, it's possible to find information about this on countless sources. And again, why do projects like LibreWolf and Arkenfox exist, if Firefox's tracking is not an issue?
Firefox makes unsolicited connections on startup, uses Google Analytics, and connects to their website when opening every single page. They are not leaking all of your data, like Opera and Chrome do, but such behaviour is very concerning. Why do they need to know how many times i have opened my bookmarks, or when i cleaned my browser history? Extremely suspicious, and on top of that it makes the browser a bit slower.
I believe that what happens on your PC, should stay on your PC, the pages you open in your browser, stay in the browser.
The article you sent me is totally absurd and shows a complete lack of understanding or will to understand.
Librewolf and Arkenfox exist for the exact same reason this article exists: unbridled paranoia. They are actually by fat less secure than Firefox because of the risk of a compromised build chain which is lesser for an established browser.
The first example of "phoning home" your article gives is merely the get request Firefox uses to check if you are online and redirect you to a login portal if you are on shared WiFi.
The article also then makes a complaint about Firefox making requests to the sites you visit most frequently, which maked absolutely no sense, because if you visit them so frequently that then end up in your new page, then what is the problem with Firefox preloading the content?
On Google analytics, it is not part of the browser, but just used on Mozilla's website with an explicit exemption from Google not to use that data.
The "safebrowsing" requests are to download the list of known malware sites in order to keep you safe. They are not used for tracking.
The health report telemetry is the only thing that could be vaguely construed as actually being problematic, but it literally collects no personal data and is used to improve the browser.
Finally, the entire paragraph about pocket is bullshit: or course, if you create an account and start saving web pages to pocket then it is going to be stored on pocket's servers... What would you expect? The solution is simple: Just don't use pocket, nobody is forcing you to.
It is infuriating to see these lies repeatedly perpetuated online by people who have no understanding of what they are criticizing
None of the points mentioned even vaguely constitute a threat to user privacy.
To make matters worse they actually weaken users security by driving them to forks that risk them not recieving timely security updates.
I love the block list:
Steve Ballmer
Jeff Bezos
Michael Bloomberg
Sergey Brin
Warren Buffett
Larry Ellison
Bill Gates
Kanye "Ye" West
Elon Musk
Larry Page
Donald Trump
Mark Zuckerberg
Saving this one, thanks 😇
Ublock Origin & Sponsorblock - for blocking ads
DarkReader - for making all websites "dark mode"
Ublock Origin
Enhanced Steam
TWP - Translate Wep Pages (works better than the native chrome version)
ytc filter (Youtube live chat filter. When general chat becomes spammy)
Tabliss (Better version of the chrome start page)
Camelizer (Amazon price history)
Return YT Dislike
Dark Reader (How could I forget that...)
Bitwarden (or password manager of your choice)
Firefox now has it's own inbuilt local translator. None of your information is sent collected and translation is very good.
I even feel like TWP works better then the now native Firefox translation feature solely due to it allowing to translate any page by either selecting text and right clicking or by clicking on the icon in the adress bar.
Firefox has the button as well but TWP let’s you choose the translation service (I believe it’s google, deepl and 1 or 2 other services)
Enhanced Steam
thanks! twp looks interesting!
My pleasure.
I even feel like TWP works better then the now native Firefox translation feature solely due to it allowing to translate any page by either selecting text and right clicking or by clicking on the icon in the adress bar.
Firefox has the button as well but TWP let's you choose the translation service (I believe it's google, deepl and 1 or 2 other services)
Seconding Tabliss. It's gorgeous and totally customizable
Ublock origin, bitwarden, dark background and light text, tridactyl
As the chairman, I approve. Not that I would install it, but I approve.
Thank you mr.chairman
DeArrow - Crowdsource better YouTube titles and thumbnails, technically paid (1$), but you can request free access if you can't/don't want to pay
Firefox Color - Basic theming
LibRedirect - Redirect popular websites to privacy-respecting frontends (e.g. YouTube to Invidious, Twitter to Nitter, etc.)
PronounDB - Add pronoun support to Twitter, Twitch, Github, and Discord.
Return YouTube Dislike - The name says pretty much everything.
Shinigami Eyes - Mark transphobic or trans-friendly accounts as such for others with the extension to see
SponsorBlock for YouTube - Crowdsource sponsored segments in YouTube videos so you know what to skip past
uBlock Origin - AdBlock, update the block lists regularly if you want to use it with YouTube
User-Agent Switcher and Manager - Change what browser and OS websites think you're using
Vencord Web - Browser extension for the Discord client-mod Vencord, doesn't work rn because Discord is redoing some stuff
Good list. Ublock Origin and Sponsorblock are basically essential for YouTube these days. DeArrow helps to.
As well as those others have already mentioned, I use:
Linguist is a translation extension that respects your privacy. If you switch to the Bergamot translator it acts in offline mode.
Redirector which allows you to set custom rules so you can redirect (for example) Twitter to Nitter, Instagram to PikUki and also rules to redirect pages that are behind paywalls via 12ft.io (or 1ft.io as 12ft is currently down) .
TamperMonkey a userscript manager. I don't have loads of userscripts but I do have things like SocialFixer for making FB a bit better, Absolute Enable Right Click and Bandcamp Volume Bar.
ViolentMonkey as an open-source alternative for TamperMonkey.
Never heard of this - thank you very much! Easy to move scripts/settings too - export from tamper as zip - import zip into violent.
Firefox now comes with an offline translator for major languages across all platform.
Linguist looks useful, added it - thanks!!
Honestly the less you can live with the better. For me essentials are always ublock for ads, imagus for better image viewing while browsing and simple translate because I deal with a lot of languages. Also containers is useful for work.
There's the built-in Firefox translate now, though it currently only supports a handful of languages (more coming soon)
Wasn’t imagus found to be doing shady data collection?
I thought that was Hover Zoom many years ago. I hope Imagus hasn't followed the same path, it's a very useful tool.
Oh yeah it was, looks like imagus was only malicious on the edge store due to it being uploaded by someone else
Containers. Makes it very easy to manage multiple accounts for the same sites, like YT, email...
Came here to say this! Containers is awesome, and you can muffin to the same service with different accounts in the same window!
Consent O matic.
Automatically refuse cookie consent
My list:
AdNauseam
Bitwarden
Don't fuck with paste
Ecosia
Fakespot
Firefox Multi-Account Containers
Greasemonkey
Redirect AMP to HTML
TrackMeNot
User-Agent Switcher and Manager
Wayback Machine
And now I have a special profile just for Youtube so I can run uBlock Origin to shut Google up about my adblocker.
Edit: Also, if you like dark themes, check out Dracula.
Just curious: why do you use adnauseam instead of ublock origin for ad block on the rest of your profiles? I haven't heard of it before, and was curious what futures made it stand out.
It “clicks” on all ads while still blocking them from my view.
It’s not enough IMO to just block. I also want to poison their data about me by clicking on everything they attempt to show me.
Lemmy Instance Assistant It does things like if someone links a post and the link takes you to the post on another instance, it adds a button to show the post on your home instance. You can also right click on a page (say, an article on a news site) or image and choose the option to share it on lemmy, which creates a new post. It also has stuff to help you when you click a link to a community but the community is not federated to your server, or you can go to the list of communities on another instance and it will have links to take you to that community on your home instance. That sort of thing. Basically the beginnings of a RES for lemmy.
I also like Dictionary Anywhere, which lets you double click on a word to get a definition, a bit like the one Google one for Chrome.
There are also various container extensions such as a Facebook or Google one, that isolates those sites to attempt to prevent that activity being associated with your activity on other sites. It can be a little annoying to get used to but I use them. The annoying thing is that when you click say a google site from a search result on duckduckgo, it closes the duckduckgo tab and opens the site in a google container, but then you can't click back to go back to the search results.
The general container tabs extension is good too. It keeps separate cookies per container. So say if you have 3 different microsoft accounts, you can create different containers. Then you can open a new tab in a specific container and it will remember the account you logged into last time in that specific container, but doesn't affect other containers or tabs not in a container.
I think the arkenfox project website has some good info on this. For a good privacy baseline, you basically only need to enable strict mode and download the ublock origin extension, then change some settings for the extension (e.g. add filter lists).
People have already mentioned the more popular ones
Apart from those, Id recommend Behind the Overlay- it's an extension that removes a lot of unclosable popups on pages in a single click. Things like "disable your adblock" messages or websites that poorly gatekeep content behind a subscription.
ublock origin, noscript
i tried noscript and I didnt like having to manually authorize each site. it looks like it'd be useful in some situations
NoScript and umatrix are a pain when starting out. But once they are working can change your whole view of the web. Umatrix even has setting cloud saves so if you move PCs or reset in some way you don't lose an that work.
I never cared for it. Broke a lot of sites and I never found it helpful.
A bit offtopic here, but how can I auto hide cookie prompts in uBlock? What I do is that I manually hide them with cosmetic filter, then I never have to worry about accepting them or not (kinda like I still don't care about cookies extension)
Even after all this nonsense about getting bought by Avast?
I noticed an extra word and looked it up.
'I Still Don't Care About Cookies' is a fork of 'I Don't Care About Cookies'. It's not owned by Avast.
We love a good fork
SimpleTabGroups - organize your tabs
uBlock Origin - adblocker
Prvacy Badger - block trackers
I still don't care about cookies - remove cookie prompts
Stylus - lets you create your own css based on url
Canvss Blocker - prevents finger printing but can break websites.
I still don't care about cookies is a must have, it is so nice to never have to click those prompts again.
A password manager is also nice. I recommend keepassxc and it's addon
Does the cookies add-on refuse them or accept them?
Default action is to refuse all. You can whitelist sites/pages you want to keep.
Privacy Badger is kinda useless since ublock origin already blocks trackers. Same with canvas blocker if privacy.resistFingerprinting is enabled in about:config
You are probably right, but as long as my browsing works, it could not hurt.
+1 for privacy badger
If, like me, you do a lot of Chromecasting from your browser, you'll want to install fx_cast. You need to do a bit of manual installation to get it running, but it works great when you do.
Brilliant! This is the one thing that's been a thorn in my conversion.
Appreciate the post!
Bewarned that the mobile Firefox app is really not great.
I am a chronic tab-user (I have more than a hundred open right now. Yes I'm using pretty much all of them.) and 70% of the time when hitting the tab button it doesn't actually scroll to the most recent tab. I have to tap it repeatedly to get to where I was.
The tab list is horribly wasteful when it comes to space and I see no way to change it.
Some sites also shit the bed completely when auto-filling from my password manager. Like full on freeze the browser or crash it entirely.
When an app opens Firefox in an embedded browser to get you to log in, it will pretty much never direct you back to the app after putting your information in. You have to tap the three dots and open it in the actual app for even a chance that it will properly redirect you.
For 2fa sometimes this doesn't even work. I have to scan my 2fa key then quickly open it in the actual app through the menu before it finishes loading, otherwise it doesn't redirect or gets stuck in a login loop. Fun.
The browser is fine overall, don't get me wrong, there's just some inconveniences that aren't getting fixed.
This is usually more an issue of awful website design than anything else. 90% of issues I face in the FF app can be resolved by viewing the desktop site instead.
The redirect thing is definitely just Firefox being weird. It's generally a basic redirect that triggers a return-to-app, and Firefox isn't following the redirect properly
In most cases, the add-on just blocks or hides cookie related pop-ups. When it's needed for the website to work properly, it will automatically accept the cookie policy for you (sometimes it will accept all and sometimes only necessary cookie categories, depending on what's easier to do). It doesn't delete cookies.
Not to keen on it accepting the cookies on my behalf, the point is to not accept the cookie. Consent-o-matic will actively deny the requests.
Ublock
Imagus mod
Return Youtube Dislike
SponsorBlock for Youtube
Video Download Helper
Zoom Page WE
added them all, thanks!!
Firefox is quite good natively. All I have is ublock and bitwarden
Ogtand sponsorblock. I already pay for YouTube premium so I don't really care about in video ads
Are there any tab group extensions that do it similarly to chrome, with collapsible groups in the tab bar?
I don't know how Chrome does it but there is Tree Style Tab that let's you group tabs and collapse them.
I prefer Sidebery to Tree Style Tab. I've used both quite a bit, but I really like Sidebery's snapshot option to save and reload snapshots of your session, either manually or on a schedule.
Chrome does it like this:
It lets you join tabs into a group, where you can add tabs to the group, remove tabs, and expand and collapse groups all in the regular tab bar without any other menus.
uBlock Origin
Tridactyl
I use the following addons:
Media Bias/Fact Check
Shinigami Eyes
Search by Image
Purple Private Windows
10ten Japanese Reader (Rikaichamp)
Read Aloud
NoScript
Decentraleyes
DuckDuckGo Privacy Essentials
Popup Blocker (strict)
Redirector
uBlock Origin
User-Agent Switcher and Manager
thanks!!
This is a switch I made yesterday, but instead of Chrome to Firefox, I switched from Vivaldi (Chrome, but kinda like old Opera) to Floorp (japanese fork of Firefox with focus on privacy and sane defaults).
I got Sponsorblock for YouTube, uBlock Origin for ads and Gesturify for those awesome mouse gestures (my main reason for using an Opera-like).
Sometimes, I use Tampermonkey for misc Scripts on different Pages, so I installed that aswell. But for now, no scripts for Tampermonkey, as I primarily focus on setting it up to be more like Vivaldi.
Other addons are Ghostery for more privacy and Session Buddy to prevent oopsies when playing around with Tabs and windows.
Floorp even has dark mode for bright pages already included in the box.
Based on what I've read here on Lemmy, people generally tend to recommend agaåinst Ghostery, check this for one example :
https://lemm.ee/comment/4348493
Is there a way to do credit card autocomplete on the iOS app? It’s the only reason I haven’t made the switch
Bitwarden
You can also self host a "bitwarden" server that works with the official App if you wan to use the bitwarden pro features for free. It's called vaultwarden
I run this. Can attest to its brilliance. Just want to point out though that its 2FA codes built in is inherently insecure. 2FA is meant as having multiple points of verification for enhanced security. By adding them all to Bitwarden you are again putting them all into a single point of verification / all eggs in 1 basket.
Consent-o-matic
Ublock origin (activate cloud storage and sync rules between devices!)
Bitwarden
Onetab
Firefox translations
Dark reader
Privacy redirect
thanks!!
also look at sponsorblock for YT
it skippes segments of videos where the creator is taking about sponsored content directly in the vid
The only extension I cannot live without other than an adblocker is Mouse Gestures.
LibreWolf is Firefox without Mozilla telemetry, and with privacy settings on by default. Consider switching.
Be aware that the more extensions you add, the easier it is for websites to fingerprint (identify) you.
LW is great - comes with UBO pre-installed. The only thing I'd say about it is that, for Linux users, avoid the appimage as its a bit twitchy and forgets settings sometimes.
Block site (so you're not sent where you don't want to go)
Wayback Machine (if you use it much)
Audio equalizer (to better understand mumbly / old Youtube audio)
Dark background and light text (so you don't go blind)
It's the an extension for Google Passwords? It's my password manager for all my devices.
I would love to switch to Firefox, but I don't want to open chrome every time I need a to retrieve/save a password.
Switching to Bitwarden takes minutes. Export from Google, import to Bitwarden. They have a phone app too which will sync with your browser one.
Switch to BitWarden, then use this tutorial to get your passwords from Chrome into BitWarden.
It has a web, desktop and mobile app and also a Firefox extension, which are all here.
Firefox can save passwords without an extension although there is a password manager you can add. Sign into something on Firefox and it will ask you to if you want to save your login. I've haven't needed google for any reason after switching.
Surprised noone mentioned NoScript yet. It requires a bit more user interaction. But if you are worried about privacy and maybe security, it is important to know who is running scripts on your machine.
NoScript is magic. I got it on whitelist so websites by default don't get to use scripts. Turning uBlock Origin and NoScript off is an entirely different internet.
When I looked into it, it appeared uBlock origin already does what no script does when you turn on advanced mode and block 3rd party urls. (medium mode) Probably need to block first party to get quite there but that's usually overkill.
Now sticking with medium mode, most sites need a bit of fixing like no script did, but it's all done in uBlock.
Panorama Tabs! My favorite tab organizer.
Also Dark Reader.
Does having a lot of extensions running slow performance?
Yes
Thought it might. Have horrible images of internet explorer with a million buttons and fields crammed in everywhere.
Ghostery hasn't been mentioned - it has a feature to auto-decline cookies. The popup shows up, but you just wait half a sec and everything has been auto declined.
Wasnt ghostery bought some time ago and added trackers to the extension?
Consent-O-Matic can also deny cookies
More than I know I got it just for denying those popups. I guess I'll look into the other one because it has been a game changer.
I wouldn't recommend an extension which has a shady history.
ublock origin with the annoyance list activated.
dark reader. It’s not perfect but I get most sites in a usable dark mode.
That’s mostly it.
Same, all you really need. Maybe also password manager extensions for the added phishing protection
Yeah, I didn't include my Enpass extension, as it's more like a plug-in.
I also excluded TamperMonkey because I solely use it to sell my Steam cards and become filthy rich. Already 34 cents into my first million.
And last but not least: an extension that auto-upvotes YT videos from my subscribed channels because I'm too lazy to do it manually and YT can't be bothered to assign a key to it.
Sponsorblock for YouTube.
Javascript disabler to get around many paywalls.
In my testing, dark reader made sites load much slower. Anyone else notice this?
Dark Reader is entirely client side, so it shouldn't affect load times.
Render times may increase significantly though depending on cpu((/gpu?).
Yes, I suppose if their computer is a decade or two old, it might have an impact on their render times.
it can make my google drive stuff take a couple extra seconds to realize whats happening
Nope, still fast on my machines
This is my experience as well. Noticable slowdown after installing it. But IMO, it's still worth it.
In my experience enabling some of the annoyance lists broke several websites and it took a while to realise why. I do use the cookie consent list but no longer use any annoyance lists.
Firefox Multi-Account Containers
It does have some rather specific use cases but if you need it it’s amazing. Way better than chrome profiles imo
this!
Bypass Paywalls Clean is fantastic, need to install from xpi though
lol that installation was crazy simple! thanks!!
Also any sort of privacy redirector, specifically to go to nitter instead of xitter, is a must have
Something not so far mentioned is Tree Style Tab.
If you habitually have a lot of tabs open, you'll probably know how annoying it is finding things when each page title has been condensed down to 4-5 characters. On widescreen displays (especially 16:9), vertical pixels are also a lot more precious, while horizontal ones are plentiful.
For me (3840×2160 display, 200% scale), its vertical tab sidebar fits about 30 tabs before needing a scrollbar, and you get a full width title for each and every one.
It can be a bit of an adjustment at first, but I've been using this since the pre-WebExtensions days (since around Firefox 4.0), it's definitely one of my must-haves.
This changed my habitual way of working with browsers for the better, can't recommend it enough. I'm using Sidebery though, not sure of the differences, but I really like its snapshot feature.
Can't recommend TreeStyleTabs enough!
Not only does it trade off precious vertical space for plentiful horizontal space, but also the tabs get organized hierarchical, so when searching and opening multiple tabs , the tabs get grouped naturally
If you like Tree Style Tabs I'd also recommend trying Sideberry. Does the same thing but has some additional functionality.
First of all, install Betterfox, it is not an extension per se, but a set of custom settings. Betterfox offers a lot of fixes, including removed Mozilla telemetry, increased speed, smooth scrolling, privacy protections, etc.
I believe, Betterfox can also be used on Floorp (In case their website doesn't work, here's a Github link - https://github.com/Floorp-Projects), which is a Firefox-based browser with Vivaldi/Opera-like interface. Sounds neat, but i didn't really test it yet.
In case you feel too lazy to install Betterfox/Arkenfox/other user.js modifications, you can use Librewolf instead. It is a version of Firefox with bundled Arkenfox and uBlock Origin.
uMatrix, uBlock Origin, and a mixture of add-ons from Dig Deeper's list are a must for privacy. Also, i recommend reading his other blogposts about software, too. Especially this one
If configuring Redirector is too confusing for you, you can use LibRedirect, it can automatically redirect YouTube to Invidious and Piped, Fandom to Breezewiki, Google to SearX, Twitter to Nitter, and so on, so you won't have to bother with popups and ads.
For password managers, use Bitwarden, if you want to have your passwords synced in the cloud, or KeepassXC, if you want to store them locally.
Block The Rich is a fun little extension for those who are tired of reading billionaire spam, but i did not test it.
Instance Assistant Is made to improve Lemmy and Kbin experience, but, once again, i did not test it.
Also, do not use Google, Bing, Yandex or Brave as your search engine, instead switch to DuckDuckGo, Mojeek, and 4Get or SearX
Why disable telemetry?
Originally, i too, have thought that Mozilla's telemetry would be limited to only technical aspects, such as crash reports. I mean, they are using privacy as their main selling point. But of course, that was a lie. Read this. You may think that only Spyware Watchdog and Dig Deeper dislike Mozilla, but no. By searching around, it's possible to find information about this on countless sources. And again, why do projects like LibreWolf and Arkenfox exist, if Firefox's tracking is not an issue?
Firefox makes unsolicited connections on startup, uses Google Analytics, and connects to their website when opening every single page. They are not leaking all of your data, like Opera and Chrome do, but such behaviour is very concerning. Why do they need to know how many times i have opened my bookmarks, or when i cleaned my browser history? Extremely suspicious, and on top of that it makes the browser a bit slower.
I believe that what happens on your PC, should stay on your PC, the pages you open in your browser, stay in the browser.
The article you sent me is totally absurd and shows a complete lack of understanding or will to understand.
Librewolf and Arkenfox exist for the exact same reason this article exists: unbridled paranoia. They are actually by fat less secure than Firefox because of the risk of a compromised build chain which is lesser for an established browser.
The first example of "phoning home" your article gives is merely the get request Firefox uses to check if you are online and redirect you to a login portal if you are on shared WiFi.
The article also then makes a complaint about Firefox making requests to the sites you visit most frequently, which maked absolutely no sense, because if you visit them so frequently that then end up in your new page, then what is the problem with Firefox preloading the content?
On Google analytics, it is not part of the browser, but just used on Mozilla's website with an explicit exemption from Google not to use that data.
The "safebrowsing" requests are to download the list of known malware sites in order to keep you safe. They are not used for tracking.
The health report telemetry is the only thing that could be vaguely construed as actually being problematic, but it literally collects no personal data and is used to improve the browser.
Finally, the entire paragraph about pocket is bullshit: or course, if you create an account and start saving web pages to pocket then it is going to be stored on pocket's servers... What would you expect? The solution is simple: Just don't use pocket, nobody is forcing you to.
It is infuriating to see these lies repeatedly perpetuated online by people who have no understanding of what they are criticizing
None of the points mentioned even vaguely constitute a threat to user privacy.
To make matters worse they actually weaken users security by driving them to forks that risk them not recieving timely security updates.
I love the block list:
Saving this one, thanks 😇
Ublock Origin & Sponsorblock - for blocking ads
DarkReader - for making all websites "dark mode"
Ublock Origin
Enhanced Steam
TWP - Translate Wep Pages (works better than the native chrome version)
ytc filter (Youtube live chat filter. When general chat becomes spammy)
Tabliss (Better version of the chrome start page)
Camelizer (Amazon price history)
Return YT Dislike
Dark Reader (How could I forget that...)
Bitwarden (or password manager of your choice)
Firefox now has it's own inbuilt local translator. None of your information is sent collected and translation is very good.
https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/comment/4572331
thanks! twp looks interesting!
My pleasure.
I even feel like TWP works better then the now native Firefox translation feature solely due to it allowing to translate any page by either selecting text and right clicking or by clicking on the icon in the adress bar.
Firefox has the button as well but TWP let's you choose the translation service (I believe it's google, deepl and 1 or 2 other services)
Seconding Tabliss. It's gorgeous and totally customizable
Ublock origin, bitwarden, dark background and light text, tridactyl
Can I plug my own extension that helps you learn languages by translating random words in sites you read?
As the chairman, I approve. Not that I would install it, but I approve.
Thank you mr.chairman
Good list. Ublock Origin and Sponsorblock are basically essential for YouTube these days. DeArrow helps to.
As well as those others have already mentioned, I use:
Linguist is a translation extension that respects your privacy. If you switch to the Bergamot translator it acts in offline mode.
Redirector which allows you to set custom rules so you can redirect (for example) Twitter to Nitter, Instagram to PikUki and also rules to redirect pages that are behind paywalls via 12ft.io (or 1ft.io as 12ft is currently down) .
TamperMonkey a userscript manager. I don't have loads of userscripts but I do have things like SocialFixer for making FB a bit better, Absolute Enable Right Click and Bandcamp Volume Bar.
ViolentMonkey as an open-source alternative for TamperMonkey.
Never heard of this - thank you very much! Easy to move scripts/settings too - export from tamper as zip - import zip into violent.
Firefox now comes with an offline translator for major languages across all platform.
Linguist looks useful, added it - thanks!!
Honestly the less you can live with the better. For me essentials are always ublock for ads, imagus for better image viewing while browsing and simple translate because I deal with a lot of languages. Also containers is useful for work.
There's the built-in Firefox translate now, though it currently only supports a handful of languages (more coming soon)
Wasn’t imagus found to be doing shady data collection?
I thought that was Hover Zoom many years ago. I hope Imagus hasn't followed the same path, it's a very useful tool.
Oh yeah it was, looks like imagus was only malicious on the edge store due to it being uploaded by someone else
Containers. Makes it very easy to manage multiple accounts for the same sites, like YT, email...
Came here to say this! Containers is awesome, and you can muffin to the same service with different accounts in the same window!
Consent O matic. Automatically refuse cookie consent
My list:
And now I have a special profile just for Youtube so I can run uBlock Origin to shut Google up about my adblocker.
Edit: Also, if you like dark themes, check out Dracula.
Just curious: why do you use adnauseam instead of ublock origin for ad block on the rest of your profiles? I haven't heard of it before, and was curious what futures made it stand out.
It “clicks” on all ads while still blocking them from my view.
It’s not enough IMO to just block. I also want to poison their data about me by clicking on everything they attempt to show me.
love the dracula theme, thanks for the recommendation!!
What greasemonkey scripts do you use?
this one because the Don’t Fuck With Paste plugin didn’t catch it for some reason.
Plus some others that are specific to some torrent trackers I’m on.
Ublock origin fast-forward and dark reader
What is fast-forward?
Skips things like adfly and other middle man scam sites https://fastforward.team/instructions
Lemmy Instance Assistant It does things like if someone links a post and the link takes you to the post on another instance, it adds a button to show the post on your home instance. You can also right click on a page (say, an article on a news site) or image and choose the option to share it on lemmy, which creates a new post. It also has stuff to help you when you click a link to a community but the community is not federated to your server, or you can go to the list of communities on another instance and it will have links to take you to that community on your home instance. That sort of thing. Basically the beginnings of a RES for lemmy.
I also like Dictionary Anywhere, which lets you double click on a word to get a definition, a bit like the one Google one for Chrome.
There are also various container extensions such as a Facebook or Google one, that isolates those sites to attempt to prevent that activity being associated with your activity on other sites. It can be a little annoying to get used to but I use them. The annoying thing is that when you click say a google site from a search result on duckduckgo, it closes the duckduckgo tab and opens the site in a google container, but then you can't click back to go back to the search results.
The general container tabs extension is good too. It keeps separate cookies per container. So say if you have 3 different microsoft accounts, you can create different containers. Then you can open a new tab in a specific container and it will remember the account you logged into last time in that specific container, but doesn't affect other containers or tabs not in a container.
thanks!!
I think the arkenfox project website has some good info on this. For a good privacy baseline, you basically only need to enable strict mode and download the ublock origin extension, then change some settings for the extension (e.g. add filter lists).
https://github.com/arkenfox/user.js/wiki/4.1-Extensions
People have already mentioned the more popular ones
Apart from those, Id recommend Behind the Overlay- it's an extension that removes a lot of unclosable popups on pages in a single click. Things like "disable your adblock" messages or websites that poorly gatekeep content behind a subscription.
ublock origin, noscript
i tried noscript and I didnt like having to manually authorize each site. it looks like it'd be useful in some situations
NoScript and umatrix are a pain when starting out. But once they are working can change your whole view of the web. Umatrix even has setting cloud saves so if you move PCs or reset in some way you don't lose an that work.
I never cared for it. Broke a lot of sites and I never found it helpful.
A bit offtopic here, but how can I auto hide cookie prompts in uBlock? What I do is that I manually hide them with cosmetic filter, then I never have to worry about accepting them or not (kinda like I still don't care about cookies extension)
uBO > Preferences > Filter lists > Annoyances > uBlock filters - Annoyannces / AdGuard Annoyanaces
I still don't care about cookies
Even after all this nonsense about getting bought by Avast?
I noticed an extra word and looked it up.
'I Still Don't Care About Cookies' is a fork of 'I Don't Care About Cookies'. It's not owned by Avast.
We love a good fork
SimpleTabGroups - organize your tabs
uBlock Origin - adblocker
Prvacy Badger - block trackers
I still don't care about cookies - remove cookie prompts
Stylus - lets you create your own css based on url
Canvss Blocker - prevents finger printing but can break websites.
I still don't care about cookies is a must have, it is so nice to never have to click those prompts again.
A password manager is also nice. I recommend keepassxc and it's addon
Does the cookies add-on refuse them or accept them?
Default action is to refuse all. You can whitelist sites/pages you want to keep.
Privacy Badger is kinda useless since ublock origin already blocks trackers. Same with canvas blocker if privacy.resistFingerprinting is enabled in about:config
You are probably right, but as long as my browsing works, it could not hurt.
+1 for privacy badger
If, like me, you do a lot of Chromecasting from your browser, you'll want to install fx_cast. You need to do a bit of manual installation to get it running, but it works great when you do.
Brilliant! This is the one thing that's been a thorn in my conversion.
Appreciate the post!
Bewarned that the mobile Firefox app is really not great.
The browser is fine overall, don't get me wrong, there's just some inconveniences that aren't getting fixed.
This is usually more an issue of awful website design than anything else. 90% of issues I face in the FF app can be resolved by viewing the desktop site instead.
The redirect thing is definitely just Firefox being weird. It's generally a basic redirect that triggers a return-to-app, and Firefox isn't following the redirect properly
ublock was already mentioned couple of times. Additionally this one: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/cookie-autodelete/
If you are going to auto delete cookies then I suggest consent-o-matic to auto deny cookie popups.
Oh right, there is this one is also currently installed, but hidden and never interacted with.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/istilldontcareaboutcookies/
Same functionality.
Not to keen on it accepting the cookies on my behalf, the point is to not accept the cookie. Consent-o-matic will actively deny the requests.
Ublock
Imagus mod
Return Youtube Dislike
SponsorBlock for Youtube
Video Download Helper
Zoom Page WE
added them all, thanks!!
Firefox is quite good natively. All I have is ublock and bitwarden
Ogtand sponsorblock. I already pay for YouTube premium so I don't really care about in video ads
Are there any tab group extensions that do it similarly to chrome, with collapsible groups in the tab bar?
I don't know how Chrome does it but there is Tree Style Tab that let's you group tabs and collapse them.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style-tab/
I prefer Sidebery to Tree Style Tab. I've used both quite a bit, but I really like Sidebery's snapshot option to save and reload snapshots of your session, either manually or on a schedule.
Chrome does it like this:
It lets you join tabs into a group, where you can add tabs to the group, remove tabs, and expand and collapse groups all in the regular tab bar without any other menus.
uBlock Origin
Tridactyl
I use the following addons:
thanks!!
This is a switch I made yesterday, but instead of Chrome to Firefox, I switched from Vivaldi (Chrome, but kinda like old Opera) to Floorp (japanese fork of Firefox with focus on privacy and sane defaults).
I got Sponsorblock for YouTube, uBlock Origin for ads and Gesturify for those awesome mouse gestures (my main reason for using an Opera-like).
Sometimes, I use Tampermonkey for misc Scripts on different Pages, so I installed that aswell. But for now, no scripts for Tampermonkey, as I primarily focus on setting it up to be more like Vivaldi.
Other addons are Ghostery for more privacy and Session Buddy to prevent oopsies when playing around with Tabs and windows.
Floorp even has dark mode for bright pages already included in the box.
Based on what I've read here on Lemmy, people generally tend to recommend agaåinst Ghostery, check this for one example : https://lemm.ee/comment/4348493
Is there a way to do credit card autocomplete on the iOS app? It’s the only reason I haven’t made the switch
Bitwarden
You can also self host a "bitwarden" server that works with the official App if you wan to use the bitwarden pro features for free. It's called vaultwarden
I run this. Can attest to its brilliance. Just want to point out though that its 2FA codes built in is inherently insecure. 2FA is meant as having multiple points of verification for enhanced security. By adding them all to Bitwarden you are again putting them all into a single point of verification / all eggs in 1 basket.
Consent-o-matic
Ublock origin (activate cloud storage and sync rules between devices!)
Bitwarden
Onetab
Firefox translations
Dark reader
Privacy redirect
thanks!!
also look at sponsorblock for YT
it skippes segments of videos where the creator is taking about sponsored content directly in the vid
The only extension I cannot live without other than an adblocker is Mouse Gestures.
LibreWolf is Firefox without Mozilla telemetry, and with privacy settings on by default. Consider switching.
Be aware that the more extensions you add, the easier it is for websites to fingerprint (identify) you.
LW is great - comes with UBO pre-installed. The only thing I'd say about it is that, for Linux users, avoid the appimage as its a bit twitchy and forgets settings sometimes.
Cookies: Cookie autodelete or Forget me not
Block site (so you're not sent where you don't want to go)
Wayback Machine (if you use it much)
Audio equalizer (to better understand mumbly / old Youtube audio)
Dark background and light text (so you don't go blind)
It's the an extension for Google Passwords? It's my password manager for all my devices.
I would love to switch to Firefox, but I don't want to open chrome every time I need a to retrieve/save a password.
Switching to Bitwarden takes minutes. Export from Google, import to Bitwarden. They have a phone app too which will sync with your browser one.
Switch to BitWarden, then use this tutorial to get your passwords from Chrome into BitWarden.
It has a web, desktop and mobile app and also a Firefox extension, which are all here.
Firefox can save passwords without an extension although there is a password manager you can add. Sign into something on Firefox and it will ask you to if you want to save your login. I've haven't needed google for any reason after switching.
Surprised noone mentioned NoScript yet. It requires a bit more user interaction. But if you are worried about privacy and maybe security, it is important to know who is running scripts on your machine.
NoScript is magic. I got it on whitelist so websites by default don't get to use scripts. Turning uBlock Origin and NoScript off is an entirely different internet.
When I looked into it, it appeared uBlock origin already does what no script does when you turn on advanced mode and block 3rd party urls. (medium mode) Probably need to block first party to get quite there but that's usually overkill.
Now sticking with medium mode, most sites need a bit of fixing like no script did, but it's all done in uBlock.
Panorama Tabs! My favorite tab organizer. Also Dark Reader.
To get some of the missing features back:
Does having a lot of extensions running slow performance?
Yes
Thought it might. Have horrible images of internet explorer with a million buttons and fields crammed in everywhere.
Ghostery hasn't been mentioned - it has a feature to auto-decline cookies. The popup shows up, but you just wait half a sec and everything has been auto declined.
Wasnt ghostery bought some time ago and added trackers to the extension?
Consent-O-Matic can also deny cookies
More than I know I got it just for denying those popups. I guess I'll look into the other one because it has been a game changer.
I wouldn't recommend an extension which has a shady history.
Fox11 user CSS:
https://github.com/Neikon/Fox11
https://github.com/Neikon/Fox11/blob/main/image/readme/1690216288679.png
https://github.com/Neikon/Fox11/blob/main/image/readme/1690216292119.png
Foxy gestures is an enormous reason why I could never swap off Firefox in the first place
This thread is full of good suggestions so here are a few that might not have been mentioned:
I swear I see this question on my feed every damn days.