Ask HN: What browser are you using? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What browser are you using?

9 pointsFriedPickles38 comments

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?

View on HN

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.

Ah it was such wonderful time, I remember this feeling of fresh air when switching to Firefox from IE :)

Same here.

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!

Their manifest v3 enforcements on third-party extensions are problematic. I was trying to update one of my extensions recently that used a Google library (ironically) and had trouble finding a way to allow cousin libraries to be loaded.

It still hasn't been updated because of this.

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 <your ide/editor>.

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.

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.

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.

Vivaldi is many good things but lightweight is not one of them.

I meant to write 'fast'. In general it stays out of my way and doesn't eat too many resources (significantly better now tahn a year ago in that respect).

For me Vivaldi needs more resources than Edge or vanilla Chromium but the tradeoff is more than worth the additional features.

I can't comment on how resource-intensive it was a year ago, since I only started using it ~5 months ago.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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)

I have the exact same setup. Firefox does not work well with Google Meet. Thanks to the folks at Google, because a few years ago there was no issue at all.

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

Which Sonoma bug?

I don't know if it's a bug in Sonoma or Chrome but Chrome and Chrome-based browsers will intermittently throw a ERR_NETWORK_CHANGED error. Usually a simple subsequent refresh will work.

https://superuser.com/questions/1816615/getting-err-network-...

I've seen many solutions that purport to fix it but the fact that they're all different, and that no Sonoma or Chrome updates have fixed it leads me to believe it's proving to be difficult to find.

Ah, thanks. Oddly I've never experienced this in Brave, switching network connections and VPN/no VPN several times a day, but I haven't encountered it. However, I know a large number of people who have encountered it. A bit baffling.

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

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

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

Could you tell me what feature kept you there? I've been trying it on the side, but it seems to be bulkier than basically anything else I've tried.

Spaces I suppose. Very easy, clean work/personal separation. That and the bookmark/tab conflation thing they're doing is actually kind of nice once you get used to it. Oh, and sync'ing cross device is nice as well.

I don't use any of the easel or boost stuff. I'd prefer if they stop working such silly things and focus on bringing their mobile app up to par but seems like they'll get there.

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

I don't install Chrome anymore.

Firefox Nightly, although LibreWolf is looking really nice.

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/

Firefox, Brave, and Safari.

Safari and Orion

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.

Edge

WebTV

arc

Reply on news.ycombinator.com