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Ask HN: Which web browser do you use and why?

23 points by v7engine ↗ HN
I can't decide between using Librefox and Brave? Librefox because I want to support Firefox and it has first party isolation and Total Cookie Protection. Brave, because, I find it just faster than Firefox. I use ublock origin in both browsers.

95 comments

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olvy0
Firefox, with ublock origin, and set to never remember history - cleaning all cookies when I close the browser. I remember all the relevant passwords. Very fast and very stable for me. That said I don't open many tabs. When tabs go over a certain threshold I just close those I haven't read yet.

A while ago I went over the list of Librefox modifications, and decided I didn't really care if Mozilla had that information about me <shrug>.

I tried Brave but didn't like it. Something just didn't click. Looked too much like Chrome, and I don't like Chrome.

chiefalchemist
About the same for me tho I'm far less diligent about tab cleanup. Maybe some one here has a recommendation for tab management? As in, many open or easy to reopen when I go back looking for them.
anandrmedia
I use Safari on my mac, because it doesn't make my system slow
v7engine
I use Windows laptop at work, and a macbook at home. And moreover, how do you manage Adblock on Safari?
M4v3R
For some time already Safari supports extensions and there are several ad blockers that you can use with it.
Brajeshwar
Not just browsers but I also try to stay with the native App as much as possible, so I also use Safari. I use AdGuard[1] (Family Lifetime License) and works pretty well. I believe it also has the Personal AdGuard DNS[2] and I moved to it from PiHole, then NextDNS.

1. https://adguard.com

2. https://adguard-dns.io

jon-wood
+1 for Safari, partly because on Intel laptops it caused significant less battery drain than Chrome (less of an issue with the M1’s ridiculously long battery life), and partly because it means I can bounce tabs/history/etc between different devices
robalni
I use w3m (it doesn't have a graphical interface) as much as possible because I got tired of the complexity of the web. It's also much faster than Firefox; it loads pages instantly while in Firefox there is always a small delay.

When I have to, I use Firefox.

v7engine
Interesting. How can you manage browsing without a mouse. Looks like quite a hassle.
robalni
Tab and enter to click links. When there are too many links in the way I sometimes use j and k to go down or up lines to skip them or '/' to search for the text of the link. It's also possible to use numbers before j and k (or any other commands) to go down or up multiple lines. So if I see that a link is 1 decimeter below the cursor, I press "21j" to go down 21 lines which puts me close to the link and then I can usually just press tab once or twice and enter. The reason for 21 (or 12 or 31 and so on) instead of 20 is that 2 and 1 are close to each other on the keyboard so I can easily hit them with my left hand while putting my right index finger on the j key.

Reading text is easy, just page down/up which can be combined with arrow keys to go down/up half a page. Example: page down + arrow up goes down a page and then up half a page because it puts the cursor at the top of the page when I hit page down. It's also possible to scroll down one line with J and up one line with K.

Managing multiple pages is easy too. I can open a tab with T or a link in a new tab with ctrl+t and close the tab with ctrl+q and switch tab with { and }. I can go backward and forward in history by pressing s and selecting a page or just back once with B.

There are just a few things that are a bit annoying. When you open a link in a new tab, the browser is not responsive until the page has loaded or you abort it with ctrl+c. And some pages are just really bad and hard to read or navigate with a browser like this because they rely too much on javascript or css.

iLoveOncall
Just reading your comment exhausted me, this feels like such a waste of time and a massive inconvenience.

Any time you save by loading pages faster is lost a hundred folds by the inefficiency of the whole process.

All that comes to my mind is the "This Little Maneuver's Gonna Cost Us 51 Years" meme.

Rediscover
Aside from HN on my mobile (Chrome), it's lynx or w3m or emacs-w3m for me. I especially agree with your further comment below about "21" - I'm quite guilty (extending onto my command lines line as well).
jqpabc123
Brave. Simply because it is fast, efficient and offers good privacy by default. It is available on every platform I use and has shareable bookmarks.
v7engine
Since you mentioned privacy, Brave doesn't have first party isolation and Total Cookie Protection. Doesn't that bother you?
jqpabc123
Mozilla derives almost all their income from privacy invaders.

Every Firefox install is tagged with a unique ID.

Firefox runs AMP pages through Google's servers.

Doesn't that bother you?

Yizahi
If on one hand we have a minuscule improvement of user privacy from atrocious to the atrocious+1%, and on the other hand we are talking about supporting two competing browsers vs. single browser monopoly... Well I'll take Firefox support every day. Even with all the dumb stuff Mozilla foundation does.
wooque
https://coveryourtracks.eff.org/ gives me unique fingerprint in Firefox but not in Brave

according to https://privacytests.org/ Brave privacy is as good or even better than Firefox

freediver
It should be noted that privacytests.org is ran by a Brave employee (IMO there should be better transparency and disclosure on the home page).

As someone in the field (developing Orion browser) I can say that the tests do appear to be biased towards Brave features and do not include testing the most important browser privacy feature of them all, which is telemetry (Brave and most other browsers include a ton of telemetry by default).

That is a shame because the idea of the site and its open source nature is good. We definetely need something like this, just operated by an independant entity to prevent any conflict of interest for something as important as the topic of privacy.

jqpabc123
We definetely need something like this, just operated by an independant entity

I know, how about eff.org?

You ignored the first part of his post which shows that Firefox by default doesn't fair particularly well on privacy in their tests either.

Mozilla devotes more lip service to privacy than they do actual effort toward making it happen. A default install of Firefox allows most ads and trackers and can be easily fingerprinted. Is it reasonable to expect otherwise from a company that lives off privacy invaders?

Comevius
Firefox with arkenfox user.js. Librefox doesn't seem to be maintained, and it has no purpose other than pre-packaging what you can do yourself better in a second by enabling privacy.resistFingerprinting.

Brave doesn't give a hoot about privacy, they just pretend to hear your voice, because privacy and cryptocurrencies are what makes them different from their competitors, otherwise they are an ad company like any other. They are totally not paying for their positive media coverage.

Neither browser, or any browser is trully private, they leak like the sieve, but the best approach to privacy is not to stop the leaks, but to leak fake data, which is something only the Tor browser and Firefox with privacy.resistFingerprinting tries to do.

First party isolation is bullshit, it breaks many sites and it makes your browser stand out. I recommend containers.

javn
Vivaldi with ublockorigin and other privacy-related extensions.
javn
add: I run pi-hole as dns-blocker in my network.
dotcoma
Chromium-based Iridium on my Mac and Safari on my phone.
mindcrime
Mostly Firefox, at least on desktop. On mobile, mostly Chrome, although I just made it a point to re-install Firefox on my phone so I could give the latest version a try.

Why? Well in the desktop case, FF and Chrome work about equally as well in general, but I have a bias towards using OSS software, plus Firefox seems at least a little bit more interested in privacy. And also just to do my tiny part to help avoid the web becoming a complete Chrome controlled mono-culture.

taxcoder
Firefox, for the illusion of privacy it provides over Chrome, without requiring much effort on my part.
LinuxBender
Firefox + arkenfox user.js + Custom user.js overrides + Firejail + AppArmor + Iptables

Firefox at least for now still gives some semblance of control over the browsing experience addons, configurable options, etc... and can be partially hardened using user.js + firejail + apparmor. It is not perfect but I can't force websites to all be 100% compatible with eLinks/Lynx text browsers and the future PipBoy wrist browser. DNS overrides in local Unbound DNS daemon on my firewall/router.

At times I chain this to a Squid MITM SSL-Bump proxy to get more control over client/server headers but more and more sites give me captchas when I originate from a server/vps provider.

The one missing piece for me is having full control over the NetworkID in about:networking -> Network ID.

fermigier
Firefox, with Ublock Origin and NextDNS activated.
lyptt
Currently Orion since that gets me Safari + Ublock Origin. It's a little janky at the moment, but it's nice having Ublock back.
digitalsin
I check in with Orion from time to time, definitely getting better. The only thing that stops me from making it my daily driver is that 1Password support is still absolutely terrible. I hope that gets fixed soon, it's a good browser.
8ytecoder
1Password universal autocomplete is kinda okay. So that’s what I’m doing right now.
lyptt
I like it a lot. My main annoyance is when you have tons of bookmarks like I do the list freaks out and takes a good 5 seconds to fix itself. They're doing great work though, can't be easy trying to maintain parity with Safari while adding web extension support.
M4v3R
For few weeks I’m using Arc browser on Mac, which is currently in closed beta. It’s a really good chromium based browser that brings several nice and fresh idea to the browser world. I especially like the idea of spaces (that can also be totally isolated from each other) and having a sidebar instead of the usual top bar.
BigElephant
Microsoft Edge. The built in TTS is amazing.
tenebrisalietum
Edge's Web Capture feature is also nice.
BigElephant
yes! I love to use the web capture feature with my drawing tablet to annotate web pages
jrm4
Firefox + uBlock Origin + privacy badger.

Chromium when some dumb thing forced on me doesn't work for Firefox.

Pale Moon for when some good thing I really want doesn't work for firefox.

v7engine
Privacy Badger is no longer necessary. https://github.com/arkenfox/user.js/wiki/4.1-Extensions
jrm4
ooh, so this arkenfox user.js instead? Never heard of it.
anotherevan
The heuristics feature was the draw of Privacy Badger for me. I've long suspected since that was dropped that it offered nothing additional to Ublock Origin.

I've not heard of this arkenfox before. Going to have to dig in to it.

I'm surprised that Cookie Auto Delete is in the Don't Bother category. Sometimes a look at all these cookies and local storage on all these sites I barely remember ever visiting. CAD keeps things neat.

kkfx
I suggest adding ClearURLs add-on as well to strip extra URL crap :-)
timbit42
SponsorBlock - Blocks sponsor sections in YT videos

Bypass Paywalls Clean - Bypasses over 100 media paywalls

Cookie AutoDelete - Deletes cookies when you close a tab, unless you whitelist them before closing it, allowing you to remain logged in

Dark Reader - Dark mode

Easy to RSS - Finds RSS feeds on websites you visit

FB Purity - Cleans up Facebook. Disable almost anything on FB

I don't care about cookies - Gets rid of cookie warnings

Search Engine Spam Blocker - Block domains you don't want to see in search results

To DeepL - Replacement for Google Translate

Youtube-shorts block - Plays shorts like a normal video

[dead] ouid
v7engine
I love Firefox and I actually support it. As a neutral observer, I do notice that Brave is faster and snappier sometimes.
syntaxing
Firefox container is easily the best feature out of any browser. I love being able to isolate everything in categories.
dmd
Chrome, because it works with our corporate apps, and Firefox and Safari both don't, and I'm on Google Workspace anyway.
isatty
Firefox on personal non mobile devices, safari on mobile devices.

Chrome for work.

2Gkashmiri
firefox+ublock+ pihole (using localcdn for fun but i don't know)

for the most part, i used "browser.privatebrowsing.autostart=true" for like the last decade i think but i keep one window open for stuff that i has 2fa and stuff... for regular browsing, i just do CTRL+SHIFT+P and work on this, all day everyday

janlukacs
Safari - very fast, minimal UI + great battery life on laptops
hackerbrother
Chrome, because I am a pawn of American hypercapitalism. :(
spaniard89277
Firefox, my daily driver. It's nice.

Vivaldi and Chrome. For the dev tools, although vivaldi sometimes injects styles and drives me crazy.

Brave when I want to go onto onion stuff.

qbasic_forever
Firefox or Fenix (FF build on fdroid) on Android with ublock origin is just amazing.