Ask HN: What browser do you use?
At work, I use Chrome mainly because I work on an observability and analytics product, so it makes sense to use the browser that sends everything, everywhere by default.
Outside of work, though, I use Zen and have also been thinking about switching to Mullvad. Privacy-focused browsers, or even simple extensions like Mullvad, Zen, Brave, LibreWolf, or Firefox with uBlock Origin are easy to install and use these days, so I'm wondering why so many people still stick with Chrome, Safari, or Edge.
What keeps you using your current browser?
Safari is my main browser at home and has been pretty much since its inception. Periodically I go off and use Firefox, Arch, and other such things, but I always come back to Safari. It just gets out of my way, while integrating a few quality of life features that normally end up as extensions in other browsers.
My big gripe with Safari is the extensions being moved to the App Store. This creates a lot of unnecessary friction. I’m curious how much their AI extension creation will be able to do in macOS 27, maybe it will make this a moot point, but it’s still annoying.
At work I use Chrome, which I don’t like, but feel forced into it due to the company actively breaking or blocking everything else. As a general rule these days, I want to avoid all Chromium based browsers, to not give Google any more power on the web than they already have, but I’d have to quit my job for that to be possible at work.
I also use Mullvad’s browser from time to time at home.
Are you aware that it is, in fact, Safari who holds all of the power over the direction of the web? Theyve been sandbagging it for a decade, so when it doesn't support important features, developers don't make use of them.
You can learn significantly more in this tremendous blog series: https://infrequently.org/series/browser-choice-must-matter/
Chrome and Chromium browsers have around 80% of the browser market. Without Apple sticking to WebKit on the iPhone, Chrome would have a full monopoly over the browser and the direction of the web... even Microsoft caved to Google's monopoly in this space.
You can argue that this would allow things to move faster, but faster in which direction? Would ad blocking be killed once and for all? Would tracking be embedded into the core technologies so it was unavoidable? Google is first and foremost and advertising company, are those the incentives you want controlling the future of the internet?
Apple's stubbornness on the iPhone is literally the only thing stopping Google. EU regulators are trying to force that to change, which look to be some of the stories your link talks about. I find it ironic that pushing for alternatives engines on iOS is framed as browser choice, when all it will do it hand the whole internet over to Google, have developers only ever test in Chrome, and hurt the ability for any other browser to take off due to compatibility issues.
If Chrome has 95% marketshare, whatever they do is the standard, so why bother getting things approved as official standards? Why would developers bother to wait or use the standard features... just make sure it works in Chrome. That puts us back into an IE6 scenario where we all just have to hope Google plays nice, when their incentive to do so is effectively gone. Have we learned nothing from the past?
I came back to Firefox after a stint of trying others out. I returned because, despite all of its downsides, it's still the least bad option of the ones I've tried.
But (despite that I used to be hardcore Firefox user and advocate) I'm not married to any particular browser. It's so easy to change browsers that I'll do so the instant one that better meets my needs comes around.
Have you tried any other firefox based browsers, like Zen, or LibreWolf?
Yes, I have.
1- Not Chrome. Chrome has an overwhelming dominance https://www.w3schools.com/browsers/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers So, I would try anything else just for that. Perhaps I am a contrarian. Perhaps I do not like Google products in general.
2- Safari.
- For minorities. I like that
- Design, care for simplicity and detail
- Integration Apple ecosystem
- Security
- I read about the origin. Creative Selection: Inside Apple’s Design Process During the Golden Age of Steve Jobs, by Ken Kocienda.
3- Brave.
- Original idea.
- Small, specialized. For minorities
- I like the founder. Brendan Eich. He is also the creator of JavaScript and was previously CTO of Mozilla.
- I want to encourage projects with a strong founder and a novel idea for minorities.
- A good second option after Safari.
I am open to try other things. But it needs time. It has to be something very, very different. I will not spend that time for something 10% different or better. What do you thing, anyone could recommend me another browser with a clear difference?
Safari because of the seamless integration with Apple platform features and because it is the most energy efficient browser while still being the most performant. It’s the best of all worlds.
> most performant
https://open-web-advocacy.org/blog/28-percent-faster--the-bl...
If you are tied to apple ecosystem, then obviously Safari is going to be the fastest one since its apple specific so they can optimize it for their hardware, though I think with as powerful computers as we have right now, you can run almost any browser without performance issues
> I think with as powerful computers as we have right now, you can run almost any browser without performance issues
And yet Chrome’s memory usage has become a meme at this point.
Same here, I love it. I've also caught quite a few Safari only bugs because I was "that one dev on the team who uses Safari" - everyone needs a Safari dev on their team.
I use multiple browsers depending on what I am doing. I have four browsers at home Firefox, Microsoft Edge, Chrome, and Comet which is an AI Browser. They all have their different uses.
> so I'm wondering why so many people still stick with Chrome, Safari, or Edge.
most non-tech folks aren't even aware firefox exists; they just use whatever is already installed;
i predominantly use firefox, since its firebird days (v0.6 perhaps?); i switch to chrome when its one killer feature, inband language translation, is needed; firefox has a translator, but it is rather lackluster;
Why Firefox? What makes it different?
There was an era before Chrome when non-tech people were using Firefox in large numbers. Friends would install it in friend’s computers. Eventually OEMs started preinstalling it with systems. Similar to what later happened with Chrome.
I made my own to prioritize these 4 things:
1. Fact-checking built-in 2. Declutter the page 3. Lightweight 4. Ability to listen to the saved articles when I want to
Glide is my go-to browser. I like it for its extensibility, commandline, keymaps, hints, and the ability to configure everything through a ts file.
I also use Zen as my secondary browser.
I used Firefox for most of last year. I consistently ran into issues where a form wouldn't submit, or a website would appear subtly broken, but it would work in Chrome.
Ultimately I switched back to Chrome full-time as a result.
Depends on what device I am using. Currently Thorium/Chrome, sometimes Firefox.
I'm currently moving away from Chrome though, as I can no longer use any MV2 extensions because all the workarounds stopped working.
Vivaldi on desktop and mobile. It's still chromium for compatibility, but the tab handling fits me. And of course the social/political aspect is appealing (I'm from the EU).
I just started using Brave Origin after trying to switch to Safari for a while. Safari felt aggravating to use after having used Chrome for so long, but Brave has been great.
Firefox with ublock origin plugin on desktop as well as android.
Brave with all the cruft turned off except Brave Shield. Chrome isn't bad either.
I'd love to be able to tolerate Safari, but it's just not a good day-to-day desktop browser.
Been using firefox recently, least laggy out of that chrome and (eww) edge.
Google Chrome on Mac
Safari on iPhone
EWW from Emacs. If Emacs can't render the HTML then the website is not worth using. No JavaScript. I don't want to accidentally run non-free code on my processor.
I currently use firefox, works well for me.
I've been using Dia, and this got better after the recent inclusion of Spaces similar to Arc.
But, I'm suffering from RAM issues. Got 24GM RAM M5 (Non-Pro) MacBook Pro and about 10-15 tabs open, I'm consuming 19GB RAM with 5-9GB RAM in swap.
I mean... now I'm wondering if I should've got higher RAM.
Since I came from Air M1 8GB RAM, I thought 24GB is plenty enough but seems like not.
It's plenty of RAM, I think it's not your machine's fault, it's just that Dia afaik uses chromium and chromium likes ram, I used to use arc, and I was not willing to switch to Dia looking at what The Browser Company did to arc
Zen browser - based on Firefox.
Brave browser - when things don't work on Zen/Firefox.