My Browsers
These are the browsers that I still use as of posting this. Starting off with my favourites then the browsers that I unfortunately still use.
My Favourites
These are the browsers I HIGHLY recommend people to use if you were to move to a different browser.
Brave
Brave is really good for privacy since it has built-in adblocking optimised against YouTube ads and tracker-blocking. YouTube takes action against adblockers and forces the users to disable any browser extensions that do so, but with Brave, there is no such issue.
Brave is built-on Chromium with Manifest V2 which allows ad-blocking, and heavily focused on staying on Manifest V2 for as long as possible.
For Brave Android, you can exit or turn off your mobile device and the audio of YouTube and Twitch can still play. This is my favourite aspect of Brave browser.
I highly recommend disabling the crypto-related stuff, as Brave feels much better with all the crypto-currency related stuff turned off.
Zen
Zen is a Firefox-based browser. Zen browser does NOT collect any user information at all, and is highly customisable.
Zen is considered the Internet’s favourite browser due to its privacy, non Chromium-based and customisability aspects.
However, Zen browser only has vertical tabs, not horizontal tabs, which makes people choose Librewolf (another Firefox based browser) instead.
I highly recommend checking out this video for the best preview of Zen browser.
Unfortunately I still use
These are the browsers I (unfortunately) still use due to certain use cases where other alternatives are not available.
Microsoft Edge
I use Windows 11, and my University made me use Microsoft Teams. Whenever I click on Microsoft Teams related URLs, it redirects me to Edge instead of my default browser.
This forced me to use Edge for University related activities, including Outlook Web and University related links.
However, Microsoft Edge has great built-in features for PDF documents related activites, such as annotating texts or viewing.
Chrome
I stream to Twitch, and the Stream Together feature does not work on Brave browser for some reason, so I use Chrome for maximum compatibility tasks such as Stream Together.
I also had developed Selenium projects with Chrome WebDriver, so using Chrome is the most convenient option.
Other Good Options
I haven’t personally used these browsers but I heard a lot of good things about it:
- Helium (Mac)
- Librewolf
- Vivaldi
Chromium vs. Gecko (Firefox)
Majority of the browsers out there are built on Chromium engine, which is developed by Google; Firefox is built on the Gecko engine, which is built by Mozilla.
The Chromium engine and Firefox browser are open source, so other browsers are built on those instead of Chrome or Gecko Engine directly. The only outlier is the Ladybird browser project, which is still not stable as of posting this.
Why Firefox-based browsers?
Google announced that Manifest V3 is going to take action against browser extensions that block ads and other similar features.
Mozilla confirmed that they will not plan to take such action, leading to improved reputation for Firefox along with their privacy focus.
Why still Chromium?
Google sets the web standards, so Chrome and Chromium engines tend to have the best web standard compatibility, whereas Firefox-based browsers fall slightly behind.
For example, the View Transitions API is not fully functional in Firefox. Furthermore, Firefox does not have proprietary codec formats (MP4/H.264/ACC) and focuses on open formats (WebM/VP9/Opus) instead. This allows Chromium browsers to have codec compatibility.
Final Thoughts
Feel free to disagree with my opinions.
I use Brave as my primary browser, Zen as my secondary browser, Edge for work/study, and Chrome for the best Web APIs support.
I am open to hear out about other people’s experience with other browsers, especially if they are not mentioned in this blog post.