As a web developer I have a love & hate relationship with browsers. On one side, I need them to function properly in order to do my job, on the other I want them to be as minimal as possible. At the same time I’m trying to spend less and more meaningful time on the browser which is why I decided to minimize it. I’m on a Mac and I decided to use Safari as my primary browser. Now, before you start screaming at the screen, I know what you’re thinking: Safari is awful. And I don’t disagree with that. Being awful is a plus. I don’t want to be comfortable, I want my browser to behave badly which is why Safari, with all its weird and stupid bugs is perfect. My safari looks like this:
Here’s how the taskbar is set up if you’re curious and want to do it yourself.
As you can see, I removed pretty much everything. Only thing left is the search bar at the center. I can use gestures and the keyboard to navigate through tabs and go back and forth through the history so I don’t need any button at the top. I’m also trying to have as fewer tabs open as possible. This is something that’s part of my commitment to be digitally minimal.
Few extra settings
In addition to the minimal taskbar, there are a couple of extra steps I took in order to have a more minimalist browser.
Both new windows and tabs open on a blank page. That’s because I don’t want to get distracted by icons. If I open the browser I want to stay focused on the current task and not browse mindlessly.
I’m also loading a custom css file, which I use to hide stuff from websites I use somewhat regularly. It’s used primarily to hide parts of the sites, change the typography or the colors. Nothing super crazy but definitely helpful.
What about the other browsers
A yes, the other browsers. We’re talking about Firefox and Chrome right? Chrome is my dev browser because Safari’s webtools are frankly a pile of hot garbage. My Chrome looks like this:
The new tab is a custom extension I coded months ago. It’s available for free on the Chrome App store or whatever is called. You can’t really remove many things from Chrome. All the extensions are hidden, home icon is obviously gone but other than that it looks pretty much like a normal Chrome installation.
Firefox is a bit more interesting. I don’t use Firefox a lot to be honest with you even though has got much better lately and I quite like it as a browser. Still, if it’s your primary browser and you want to minimize it, this is what you can do. My Firefox looks like this:
As you can see, almost everything is gone from the sidebar. Only things you can’t remove are the two arrows but I moved one of the two on the opposite side in order to have a less busy left corner. Only other thing left is the search bar.
I’m also using the dark color scheme. You can change the theme down at the bottom of the customization page.
As for the settings, like I did for Safari, an empty page is shown every time I open a new tab or window. This is super helpful to cut down distractions.
Another thing you can do is turn off those obnoxious notifications requests. To do that you need to go in the Privacy & Security section inside the settings and click on the Settings... button next to Notifications.
Then, at the bottom of the new window, you’ll find a checkbox to disable all new requests. Toggle that and you’ll be good to go. This is something you can do in Safari as well btw. You can find the same option under Settings > Websites > Notifications.
And that’s it. Enjoy your simpler browser. And let me know if you think there’s something else that could be done to improve the browsing experience.
January's Thoughts and Interviews
A moment with tea
Bix Frankonis
How Do You Read My Content
Yearly reminder to use RSS
V.H. Belvadi
Year 10
2025 December
What did I read this year
A moment with a sunset
Lars-Christian Simonsen
On simple solutions
Thoughts on MCP
Kathleen Fisher
Age-gating the web
IndieWeb Carnival: where do I wish to see the IndieWeb in 2030
Nick Heer
On open protocols
Come on John
Stephanie Stimac
November
Double opt-in PSA
On eating shit
Karen
Dealgorithmed
A moment in yet another memorial
Alexandra Wolfe
Y’all are great
Nic Chan
Following up on input diet
Input diet
Robb Knight
A moment with a decidedly less gloomy church
46.1007188 — 13.5545292
October
Frank Chimero
46.1186821 — 13.5953544
IndieWeb Carnival: On Ego
Romina Malta
Look, another AI browser
10 pointless facts about me
A newsletter-related PSA
Five least favourite tech topics
Alice
From the Summit 2.0
On concrete examples
Linda Ma
My issue with the two sides
Safari and iOS 26: PSA and a rant
On public online behaviour
Blake Watson
Making things obvious
September
New site, kinda
Scoring books
Kris Howard
Digital fatigue
Robert Birming
RIP my minimal phone setup
Two quick news items
Jack Baty
On em dashes
Blogs don’t need to be so lonely
I guess they did not, in fact, make it
Louie Mantia
On my August challenge
August
Courtney
You will not believe what I just wrote
Tom Critchlow
AI this, AI that
Loren Stephens
First update on the August challenge
Alexandra
Sticking with it
Emma Goto
July
August Challenge
The July experiment: week four
On books and assumptions
Marisabel Munoz
Why this matters
The July experiment: week three
Alex Sirac
On using Apple products
RSS feeds
The July experiment: week two
BSAG
The July experiment: week one
A gift to myself
Rewiring the brain
Nick Simson
Random mid-year update
June
IndieWeb Carnival: Take Two
Experimental June: week four
On complaining
David Wertheimer
Minimal New Page
Experimental June: week three
Dave Rupert
Digital chains
On corpses, selfishness, and ownership
Experimental June: week two
James A. Reeves
A moment on the fields
Experimental June: week one
Non-negotiables
Benji
A moment with climbers
May
Sebastián Monía
On Browsers, AI, and the web
Experimental June
The web != the web
Seth Werkheiser
A moment with a pizza
Celebrating kindness
Watts Martin
Web Accessibility. A follow-up.
Your license is a scam
Web Accessibility. Help needed.
Sharing, helping, connecting
Anh
A moment with waves
Labeling the mind
A moment with concrete
A thought on AI and creativity
Alexandra Deschamps-Sonsino
Tomorrow
April
IndieWeb Carnival: Renewal
Frills
Fixing the mind
Jeremy Keith
When a side project finds you
Jedda
A moment with long shadows
Matt Webb
Online counterculture
March
Maya
Ko-Fi Wishlist
The cost of getting too big
Ben Borgers
A moment with snow and trees
Keenan
How personal should a personal site be?
James
A moment with someone flying to the moon
February
Marco Giancotti
Audience of one
The cost of doing the right thing
Ben Werdmuller
Ephemeral content
Confidently incorrect
Max Kapur
Context
Lou Plummer
Identity
January
Donny Truong
A moment after the rain
Sharing “Unplatform”
A better list of blog platforms
Tiny corners
Ava
Modern discourse
Awful people are everywhere
Ugh, I’ll have to make myself a portfolio again
Photography
Shenanigans
Short Long Form
Annie Mueller
The internet is now five websites
On Meta’s moderation changes
IndieWeb Carnival: On the importance of friction
Bloggers at the right time
Toscana
A moment of relaxation
Steven Garrity
A moment amongst the trees
A moment in a back alley
A moment with the two towers
A moment with some leftover Christmas spirit
Blogging: you’re doing it right
Blog Questions Challenge
On Spotify
Pauline P. Narvas
Just because you can doesn’t mean you should
Twenty Twenty-Five, codename “Output”
2024 December
Was 2024 a good year?
A solved Bluesky conundrum
The Bluesky conundrum
Kindness in a transactional world
Jatan Mehta
A moment on my favorite bench
On featured images in blog posts
Meta blog post
Zinzy
On asking
Moonlight
Sunday update
Chris DeLuca
Digital responsibilities
Topic blockers
Erica Fustero
Life on pause
The correct amount of ads is zero
On blogging, substacking (?), and owning digital real estate
Personal philosophy
November
Lucy Bellwood
On Bluesky
Em
Media diet
An appreciation of the “mark all as read” button
Small scale is the best scale
Sara Jakša
Housekeeping
A moment of natural therapy
Dalton Mabery
Regaining focus
An afternoon of early November
Westley Winks
October
A moment in yet another Airbnb
Denny Henke
Constraints in video games
Steyn Viljoen
Creation and Curation
Chris O'Donnell
A Ko-Fi PSA
Xanthe Tynehorne
A moment with morning light in the kitchen
IndieWeb Carnival: multilingualism in a global Web
On personal websites and social web
September
Justin Duke
Internet commentary
It should be easy to say “My bad, I was wrong”
Giles Turnbull
Thoughts on the new iOS control centre
Discovering new blogs is stupid hard
Naz Hamid
The EU vs US iPhone debate
Steve Ledlow
IndieWeb Carnival: Power Underneath Despair
On People and Blogs and courtesy
The internet used to be great
The social web
August
Marty Day
On email addresses (again)
My software stack is old
Yelling at the web clouds
Thoughts on symbols
Robert Kingett
On the value of context
On hobbies, side projects, and money
Ploum
IndieWeb Carnival: Rituals
Fifty shades of people and their blogs
Georgie Cooke
Digital nudges
The “blowing smoke up your ass” theory of AI
Anne Sturdivant
July
Thoughts on politics and communities
A moment among the trees
Daniel Miller
On goals, online projects, and the usefulness of money
Mismatch
Thoughts on digital communities
Luke Harris
Should you give up social media?
One hundred
Andrew Stephens
A moment walking towards the sunset
Some more thoughts on TBC
A moment with my 35th bday
Anton Podviaznikov
A moment of morning light
Shared reality
On being humble and accepting success
June
The Mimo Diaries: Feedback and Directory
Everything is freeware
Alison Wilder
Ads hypocrisy
Fighting bots
A moment of blissful relaxation
Jennifer Devastatia del Gato
On “What Money Can’t Buy”
Blocking bots
Jessica Nickelsen
Celebrating failure
The money conundrum
JF Martin
How to converse online
They might not make it
Slashes
May
Matthew Graybosch
AI and the English language
Bearblog is fun
Consumption-to-creation ratio
Rebecca Toh
A moment with a birthday good boy
My blogging workflow
A moment of daily practice
A moment with a choice
A moment from a misty morning
Om Malik
Curation, search, and the future of the web
It’s fun to do silly things
A comment on the Apple iPad ad controversy
Sharing too much about too little
Riccardo Mori
The webs
On guestbooks
The kitchen s(l)ink post
Cory Dransfeldt
IndieWeb Carnival: Natural creativity
April
The web is not dying
Veronique
Too little, and too much, self-promotion
Re: Growth is a mind cancer
Simone Silvestroni
A comment on comments
Tracy Durnell
On video podcasts
Matt Stein
IndieWeb Carnival: Good enough and the search for perfection
Pay per scroll
March
Why I write
Adrianna Tan
Writing about writing
Growth is a mind cancer
Taylor Troesh
Why I don’t write dev posts
A moment with a bunch of fun sheep
From ink to pixel to ink
Sara Joy
A moment with a sunset
Housekeeping
Digital walled gardens
Brad Barrish
Guestbooks are cool
It’s Time to Give Up on Everything but Email
IndieWeb Carnival: Accessibility in the Small Web
IndieWeb Carnival: Roundup
Cassidy Williams
February
Chris Coyier smells like donkeys
On POSSE
IndieWeb Carnival: February is almost at the end
I have a new* website
Society and technology
Herman Martinus
On dreams and goals
Peter Rukavina
Ai and Robots
On climbing and design
Housekeeping
Phil Gyford
The great list of all the blog platforms
A rant on ARC Search
Routines
The Mimo Diaries: Streams and Menus
Winnie Lim
On digital relationships
January
IndieWeb Carnival: Digital Relationships
Best laptop of 2024
A People and Blogs PSA
Ran Prieur
Positive Internalization
Private conversations in public
Tom MacWright
Indieweb Carnival
If a human does it
On enjoying the process
Rachel Smith
The Mimo Diaries
A moment with a great book
Arun Venkatesan
Answers to my analytics inquiry
Create more. Consume less.
Yet another year of living without
2023 December
Analytics inquiry
Derek Sivers
Reflecting on learned things
A moment up high on a lake
Chris Butler
Pirating social media
Jamie Thingelstad
I’m taking over Minimalissimo…for real this time
Eli Mellen
The personality of a personal website
One a Month
More new mindsets, fewer new technologies
Nicolas Magand
November
Housekeeping
Human connection
Robin Rendle
On creating beautiful things
On Ad Blockers
Chris Coyier
Conversation enders
App Defaults
Piper Haywood
The beauty of broken things
Jamie Crisman
On subscriptions
October
Why I'll never do podcasts
Ray Thomas
A moment with a hardware bug
Jim Nielsen
Shoes dilemma
Ana Rodrigues
How to make a blog
Internet culture outsider
Andrea Contino
My issue with the modern NBA
September
Toby Shorin
Bots, Spiders, and Crawlers: The Results
Brian Koberlein
Bots, Spiders, and Crawlers
Housekeeping
I don't want your data
Kev Quirk
A moment up on the mountains
Rachel J. Kwon
Use a custom domain name
Website flexibility
Places on the web
Manton Reece
August
Housekeeping
People and Blogs
A moment on the 2nd biggest lake
Self-promotion
Who is to blame?
Unscalable businesses
July
My three rules for online interactions
The web I want
Carl has a new blog
Who are you writing for?
Links
I am not a writer
A moment with some proper mountains
On the state of the web
June
A moment with things not going as planned
Clients and budgets
AI will not replace you
A moment with a cloudy sky
Small communities are the best communities
May
A moment thinking about decisions
Answering machines
I'm taking over Minimalissimo…
Spotify and the bullshit podcast ads situation
Focus
Poking around my server logs
Financial transparency
Digital simplicity
My verified online presence
April
A moment with my crazy dog
Usernames roulette
Criticising is the easy part
I hate internal linking
Incentives and motivations
A note on Substack
Writing about writing
10000 URLs
Let people contact you
RSS excerpts
March
Sysadmin
Verified human
Writing voice and beginner’s mind
Bandwidth consumption
Thoughts on an unpolished note
A personal blog doesn't need a homepage
A rant on web font licenses
Minimum viable blog
Monetising online content
I'll read it
Website complexities
A moment on yet another lake
February
Human curation
How much is a friendship worth?
A moment with a not-so-distant past
Good enough
Consumismo ed integrità morale
Great software is timeless
January
A moment with sand and waves
A less artificial future
Shared understanding
Unsolicited blogging advice
A moment in Italy's green heart
Quitting
RSS feeds for everyone
Money is one of the reasons why today's internet fucking sucks
A moment of sleepiness
2022 December
How to start a successful blog in 2023
End of year book review
Free speech absolutism vs the real world
Quirky search engine
On the current decentralisation movement
To the moon
Another year of living without
On public email addresses
How to consume the news
A quick word on scrolljacking and new tab fuckery
November
A moment with real and fake birds
On internet silos
A moment of clouds and light
Letting go
October
On the struggles of the mind
My attempt to answer the question "What is too minimal?"
A moment of sunlight after the rain
September
Who owns a conversation?
Selfishness
The web is failing us
A moment of urban patience
#Shorts
UHX
August
Passionless Web
A moment contemplating the mountains
Selflessness
On becoming a better designer
Loneliness
July
A few thoughts on RSS
A moment of glowing light
Algorithmic nonsense
Production Values
June
What is worth filling your mind with?
May
Portfolio, Projects and Posts
Links and webrings
A moment reflecting on the past
April
Communities and free speech
On Web 3.0, capitalism and money
Honest Design
February
Spectrums
On owning your content, complexity, platforms, elitism and a bunch of other related topics
Endless everything
January
A moment on the lake
The new year’s post
2021 November
On finding reasons
On life
October
Humans and tech companies
A somewhat depressing realisation
The creativity ark
Phones and Social Media
Thoughts on social media
September
On Words and Definitions
Six Seven Eight
Crunching some numbers
Can I ask you a favour?
On September the 19th
Social media and social groups
Social platforms
On the indie web... again
Thoughts on UX
August
On the indie web
Thoughts on communities
Sharing rules
Mistakes and doubts
On audience capture and fast food content
10 years
An update on side projects
July
A moment with old and new
On photographs
Adoption Sponsorships
On discovery and consumption
June
The internet is not broken. People are.
Sharing is caring
On reading books
Motivations
Online Conversations
Asynchronous conversations
May
What even is a website anyway?
Scaling Up Kindness
What I learned by being #1 on PH and reaching HN front page
The shape of digital interactions
A moment of solitude on the mountains
Should I care about this?
April
Something about the evolution of the web
March
Inspiration overload
Greed is ruining the web
My love/hate relationship with the web
February
A moment with sun and hot tea
Responsibilities
January
The curse of the perfect tool
Thoughts on newsletters
2020 December
We wrote a little something
November
On November the 18th
Since Google asked...
Containers
On monetary support
A moment with mountains and clouds
October
A moment on the trenches
Let's play the internet game
Not a success story
A moment with my brother
A moment on the border
September
Words
A moment on the mountains
A moment with myself up on the mountains
Blogrolls and Links
A moment with a clear sky and a sunset
Manufactured Authenticity
August
Self reflection
On August the 9th
July
Friends' Projects
On July the 27th
On side projects, money, motivations and human connections
Welcome to Manu's website
My internet has no comments
How to start a blog
June
Domain Squatters
On Value
The reachability illusion
On Web Responsibilities
On Random Interactions: Part Two
A quick update on browsers
May
On Random Interactions
On Clutter, Noise, Abundance and Less
On Websites
The May Update
April
On burning out, breaking the law, disappearing and cabin fever
My new portfolio
March
Stories
Bits and Bytes of Humanity
Subscriptions
For the people who are listening...
February
Meandering Rivers
Web Responsibilities
Smallness
My weird phone setup, two years later
Why I hate money
A moment on a familiar peak
Workspace
Kind Words
January
Discoverability
Simple solutions
Faceless relationships
I don't know how to browse the internet anymore
Moments In Time
2019 December
Fashion time
Here we go again
November
Trust
Closing thoughts: Living a simple life is not easy
Chapter 5: Objects are not everything
Chapter 4: Digital and Physical
Chapter 3: Function over Form
Chapter 2: Design doesn't matter
Chapter 1: The Mindset
Introduction: What Minimalism is and is not
Manu's guide to minimalism
October
Cento
Knowing yourself
Confidence
Meditations
Websites and complexity
Smart Technology
What makes you happy?
Human debugging
Leaving a mark
Ups and downs
August
Setups
Minimal Technology
Quitting social media
Minimalism and Technology
A Short Hike
Understated design
July
A simple browser
May
Mental Space
Writing, Hiking and Sharing
I want my phone to be a washing machine
April
Life, money, work, and a bunch of other things
Low tech solutions
March
What does minimalism sound like?
Digital and Work Setup
Minimalism Life
February
Time
Hello fellow human being
January
Technology of thoughts
Addition by subtraction
Problems and solutions
Digital Hermit
2018 December
Walking
November
A bit of this, a bit of that
Lists are hard
Blogs
Why I stopped using feeds
October
The rhythm of digital life
Seven
Let’s talk Minimalism
September
Timeless design
Another iPhone post
A moment with the sunset and some puddles
August
Do not disturb
Ignore the numbers
Why I love emails
Quiet web
July
A minimal browser
The curation issue
Online authenticity
There are people on the other side
Who are you?
Typography and spacing in CSS
History of my personal website
Watching The World Cup
Mnmlqts
June
Mnmllist
Minimalissimo Shop
Be deliberate
A reflection on digital publications
TTRO
Things To Read Online
My “Water May”
May
"Not so quick" update
The usefulness of preferences
My April without surfing the internet
April
My March with no sweets, cookies and cakes
March
Alessandro Scarpellini
Portfolios
My weird phone setup
A minimal email client
My February without music and podcasts
February
This is it
A January with no computer before lunch
January
Numbers and stats
Meditation as a design tool
The Gallery - Version Six
I own a smartphone
A December with no wifi
2017 December
Year in review, 2017 edition
Opinions
Personal brand is a stupid concept
How to deal with iOS like a crazy person
A November without digital entertainment
November
Being a "digital nomad" is overrated
Designed Space
Collaborations
6.04
An October without phone and tablet
October
Podcast Recommendations
Have fun
Money and Stress
September
A September without gaming
What matters
Declutter
On tools and crafts
My year of living without
Way too many side projects
Looking for something to read?
August
The unappreciated value of silence
Do I need this?
July
Minimalissimo
March
A moment with water and waterfalls
February
Winter is almost over
Style and lifestyle
Self questioning
Deal with it
January
Obstacles
Find something that works for you
I hate you Winter
So far so good.
Habits. habits everywhere.