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Comment by donkeyboy | Hacker News Reader

Different topic, but can someone talk about which browser they use now? I’ve used Chrome for the past N years with ublock Origin, but recently I’ve been getting some ads on Youtube. Also some websites just didn’t work in Chrome. I switched to Brave a week ago and things seem ok, but it’s a weird browser with Tor built in, and also Spotify.com always crashes with a Memory problem. Does anyone have any thoughts on browser preference these days?

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Brave is great. I disabled all the web3 stuff and tidied up the homepage so it doesn't show me all the news etc.

The only issue I have is that the sync between my iphone, macbook, windows can sometimes get out of sync.

I use brave exclusively for years - zero problems - seems faster to me than other options. Also use it with Spotify and can't remember ever having an issue (brave on mac if it makes a difference).

Yes it has Tor built-in, but you don't ever need to use it - it's just there in case you do (I have never needed it myself).

I hated Firefox for the longest time, because it was a sub-par browser with a cult following, but since Chrome ruined any competition I went through several chrome-based browsers (never Chrome itself due to severe lack of basic functionality) and am slowly ending up with FF as my primary browser. My standards have lowered substantially, and firefox is just good enough. Always using more browsers and trying something on the side, but while there are some nice features to be found, there is always a major drawback. I had high hopes with Vivaldi, but it's a broken mess that I can't recommend.

Would you mind saying what you would like to do but can't with FF?

I don't think I'm part of a cult, but I've used FF as my default browser for over a decade and I guess I don't know what else people want from a browser.

For me it's how user-defined search engines work. In Chromium-based browsers you can just supply a URL-template, a name, and a shorthand, and you're off to the races, it takes 10 seconds to add one.

In Firefox it used to be you needed to like create your own little mini-addon or something like that, and these days they have "smart bookmarks", but it's such a weird name and doesn't really work the same.

At any rate, I have 100 different little shortcuts defined like for example "tren" which takes the given text, puts it into a translator, and auto-detects language and translates to English. Ditto "sven", "ensv", "trsv", then I have "wiki", "wikise" (Wikipedia Sweden), "wikt", "aw" (ArchWiki), etc., etc.

I use these hundreds of times a day, and when I tried converting to Firefox (before I eventually landed on Brave) I couldn't find a simple way of moving these from my Google Chrome profile to Firefox and have it work like I expect it to. Perhaps that's possible now?

It's not the same, and you can't import them from Chrome, but I'll share what works for me just in case it works for you as well. Which is: set DuckDuckGo as your default search engine, and use their "bangs" - you'll be able to guess most of them, and never have to set them up yourself. For example, you could use !deepl, !wiki, !wse, !wt, !aw, etc. etc.

(If you do still want to use e.g. Google for search, you can use !g.)

I think this works equivalently in Firefox, but I don't know if there is a mechanism to import from other browsers.

E.g., I use a bookmark of:

  https://caniuse.com/mdn-html_elements_%s

With a keyword set to:

  caniuse

And then type in the URL bar:

  caniuse div

To open:

  https://caniuse.com/mdn-html_elements_div

I'm a bit confused, don't you just navigate to the page and right click the url to add that page to search? It will default to an @baseurl, like @wikipedia. But you can go to settings > search and scroll down and add your own shortcut. Or you can click the cog wheel in the address bar.

Another user mentioned ddg's bang commands, and that's how I name things. But also built in there's "^ " (need the space) for history, "* " for bookmarks, "% " for tabs and "> " (disabled by default?) for actions.

I really don't see how this is meaningfully different from chrome. Aren't you performing the same actions? Or actually less? "navigate to url, right click, add, (optional) click cog, supply additional shortcut(s)"

In Firefox you right click on a website's search field and select "Add keyword for this search". The you can use "<keyword> whatever you're searching" in the address bar and it will take you right to the results page.

It works great but is poorly advertised and not particularly discoverable... They're stored as bookmarks so it should be possible to import them.

I think firefox almost always could do a lot. But the out of the box experience was very lacking. Even now that I'm using it as a default browser I had to tinker with some settings, and still didn't get where I would want it. For example the tabbing experience definitely needs an extension, but I don't want one. But it's oh so much better than it used to be. Split stop/reload used to drive me crazy - just why?

Huh, I'm very happy with Firefox. Been using it, and Chrome, for several years now - I much prefer Firefox, but I'm kind of curious what you prefer about Chrome?

I don't prefer Chrome. Chrome is the worst, I only ever used it as a second browser for Google products.

> with a cult following

I guess I'm in this cult. But one of the big reasons is what else is fighting the chromium monopoly? Safari? Just imo there's not too big of differences between browsers and people just exaggerate these differences.

This "cult" era I meant was before Chrome. Now that the dust settled (many years ago) after Google ruined everything we all should be using Firefox.

Firefox

I know what you're gonna say, but forgetting everything else there's one important factor you should consider. Chrome has a (near) monopoly and resolving that monopoly requires using non-chromium browsers.

But on top of that, Firefox is fast, secure, has privacy in mind, and a rich set of add-ons. But most of that is true for any browser you pick. There really aren't big differences between browsers and often we're making mountains out of mole hills when we compare. But I'll say, firefox has ad-blocking on mobile (plugins on mobile, like 800 exist)

Been using Brave since I think around 2019? Very happy with it, love the integration of IPFS, ENS, Unstoppable domains, and the removal of all the Google trash present in Chromium. Fully end-to-end encrypted sync as well. Don't use Tor much, but it's great that it's easily accessible if I need it.

I’ve been using Firefox for nearly two decades and I’d be hard pressed to switch now. I’m practically married to it: through sickness and health.

Brave or Firefox with UBO a few userscripts, and a lightly tweaked user.js/userChrome for nice-looking tree-style tabs, in no particular order.

Haven't had Chrome installed on any of my machines for ~5 years at this point.

Not the biggest fan of Brave (especially considering this latest AI crap, and all the weird crypto stuff), but I'm satisfied with it overall. FF still remains #1 in my eyes and usage, but has to be tweaked to my liking.

Firefox is safe bet. But not sure why would Brave have special problem with Spotify, it is Chromium based.

I'm very happy with Firefox.

I use Brave for YouTube and things that require Chrome and Safari for everything else. Oh… Firefox for when I want to load Facebook. Like once a quarter.

Firefox on Linux because touch-pad gestures for forward and back navigation don't work on Chromium browsers and also Firefox gives me a nice vertical tab setup with Tab Center Reborn + custom userChrome.css

A tip I found recently in about:config

browser.compact.show=true to bring back the compact layout option, results in very good use of space on laptop along with vertical tabs and also Firefox allows the vertical tabs to be moved to right side which is nice.

If ads, in particular on YouTube, are the problem, anything Chromium-based is probably only going to get worse and worse (see [1] and [2]). So that basically leaves you with Firefox and Safari.

I work for Mozilla (speaking for myself, of course), so I'll leave you to guess which I'd recommend :P

[1] https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/uBlock-Origin-works-b...

[2] https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/09/googles-widely-oppos...

Brave. I pretty much turn most things off and use it as a more private Chrome with vertical tabs.

I still use Chrome, mostly because I much prefer Chrome dev tools over any other dev tool options. And I have a bunch of custom browser extensions I've made for Chrome.

I haven't had issues with uBlock Origin - very occasionally an ad will seep through on YouTube, maybe once every 6 months, but when that happens I refresh the page and the ad is gone.

Safari is the new IE and Firefox I've always found to just be alright - for sure not as big of a fan of Firefox dev tools over Chrome dev tools. And Firefox scrolling behavior can be annoying.

I use Chrome for work on all my devices, and avoid any non-work browsing on it. It's an attempt to keep the two halves of my life apart.

For all personal browsing and projects, I generally used Firefox, but switched over a couple years ago to using Brave on the phone, and am kind of half-transitioned from Firefox to Brave on desktop. I've been a Firefox user forever, but it's slowly losing me.

I've been using Brave for a few years now. It's speedy enough, and does a great job of blocking ads and trackers. I've never had issues with Spotify and I like the auto-dismissing of cookie banners too.

Cromite[0] is the best on Android, it's a privacy-oriented open source patchset on top of Chromium.

Cromite has a desktop build, but it's a bit more experimental than the mobile build, so you can use Ungoogled Chromium[1] instead. Ungoogled is also a privacy-oriented open source patchset on top of Chromium. Check the beta flags to enable some more interesting features like getClientRect anti-fingerprinting measures (unfortunately breaks some React-based sites that go into infinite re-render loop).

Both of these browsers selectively include patches from Brave, but they are community-oriented builds so imo more trustworthy than Brave, which continues to package various shady anti-features and always will because it's backed by a for-profit company.

LibreWolf[2] is the nicest Firefox-based one for desktop, I think. It's pretty hardcore, though, I most only use it to visit mainstream social media sites.

I tried a bunch of the Firefox-based ones on mobile and none of them clicked for me. Cromite is just too slick on Android. Put the address bar at the bottom and off you go. Only downside is no online syncing of tabs and bookmarks, but meh. You can save all open tabs to bookmark bar in one hit then export your bookmarks, send the file through whatever E2EE channel you want to your other device, import and reopen them again.

[0] https://github.com/uazo/cromite

[1] https://github.com/ungoogled-software/ungoogled-chromium

[2] https://librewolf.net/

I use Safari for personal browsing, Firefox for work stuff (because my work machine is Windows). Firefox with uBlock Origin works quite well at keeping me mostly safe from ads.

Firefox + uBo. TOR browser uses Firefox as a base for a reason, and uBo works best on Firefox

I love edge, even before the AI stuff, it had a great feature set and less memory consumption than Chrome

I use Brave. It's a fine browser. The ad-blocking is almost on par with uBlock Origin. And I like its built-in Tor, BTW. I don't have any issues with Spotify.com, and it doesn't crash on me. I'm on a Macbook Pro M2 Max, and I also use it on a Galaxy S21U (Android).

I tried using Firefox on and off, but it's sadly technically inferior to Chromium, and that gap has gotten worse. It still has things that it does better than Chromium browsers, like history sync actually working, or reader view. But those are few and far between. And Multi-Account Containers, one of its apparent advantages, comes with the caveat that Firefox doesn't have usable profiles and the security for its extensions is worse (e.g., no click to activate, no ability to disable extensions in certain containers).

What finally pushed me to Chromium is the poor PWA support in Firefox. On Android, it has bugs that haven't been fixed for years (never mind the poor performance that's well known), and on desktop they've basically dropped the ball.

I use several PWAs. If it's a chat app, I use it as a PWA. Also Spotify, since you mentioned it ... as I like having better sandboxing and ad-blocking in my apps. On Android, too.

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