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Tell HN: Helium is the best browser I ever used

6 points by prmph ↗ HN
Helium (https://helium.computer/) is Chromium-based, with all the Google odiousness removed, emphasizing minimalism, privacy, zero telemetry, built-in uBlock Origin, and no sync or AI features.

I am just a regular user that was looking for a Firefox alternative for a long time. I do not know why Helium does not get more attention. It's so fast all the time even with several hundred tabs, it never crashed, it is strongly privacy and safety protecting, I do not have one complaint about it.

Here are some ways the others fall short:

- Firefox and all its derivatives are frequently incredibly sluggish, even on the same machine at the same time other browsers based on Chromium and Webkit are fast. I really wanted to like them, but I just gave up finally. I can't even use Mullvad browser now.

- Safari's interface and UX seems somewhat clunky to me. I tried Orion; it shows a lot of promise as my secondary browser, but, even after updating it today, it has significant UI regressions. And this is for software that's past version 1.0.0

- Brave browser was pretty good, but I was disillusioned by their not taking user protection as seriously, and some of their "scandals"

- Of course, the least said about IE, Edge, Chrome, etc, the better

And I've tried a large number of browsers over the years: IE, Edge, Firefox, Opera, Safari, Konqueror, Chrome, Chromium, Firefox, Orion, Zen, Brave, Mullvad, DuckDuckGo, Vivaldi etc, etc.

9 comments

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tt_dev
Well you put it on my radar
Bender
Helium is my fallback when a Firefox addon is giving me grief and I don't feel like debugging it/them. Firefox will always be my primary as I find the addon options make the internet functional for me. Canonical, Certage, ClearURLs, CSS Exfil Protection, FoxReplace, NoScript, Tab Reloader, Temorary Containers, uBlock Origin, Zoom Page WE

I use both browsers on Linux.

colesantiago
> And I've tried a large number of browsers over the years: IE, Edge, Firefox, Opera, Safari, Konqueror, Chrome, Chromium, Firefox, Orion, Zen, Brave, Mullvad, DuckDuckGo, Vivaldi etc, etc.

If you are on any of these browsers, especially Chrome please switch to Helium.

saicharanjogu
what do you think about arc browser?
colesantiago
Arc Browser is trash and not privacy friendly.

Please do not use it.

satvikpendem
> is Chromium-based

Yeah I'm out, not using any Chromium browsers, especially due to not having full extension and adblocking support.

I'm not sure when you used Firefox but I don't find it slow at all, seems to be on par with Chrome and Safari.

Torikul007
Never heard of Helium, but your “hundreds of tabs and never crashed” comment got my attention. My only concern with lesser-known browsers is maintenance/security cadence. How long have you been driving it daily?
runjake
I tried to daily drive Helium on my Mac but it crashed too much (multiple times a day, as recently as a couple weeks ago). It also scores much lower on EFF's Cover Your Tracks website versus Brave. Looks interesting and I like the relative minimalism, though.