• Firefox offers better privacy and security than Chrome, with upcoming support for 200 new add-ons.
• While Chrome dominates, Firefox gains ground with user-friendly browsing experience and open-source model.
• Mozilla’s focus on user privacy and transparency challenges Google’s ad-centric approach, making Firefox a viable alternative.
120.0 (64-bit) just updated ff. still use chrome borg 1/2 time
Container tabs are hands down the best add-on I have ever used. Being able to use multiple accounts across tabs is fantastic. Alot of my colleagues have switched due to this alone
That’s one reason I like Librewolf so much, it has containers by default
which add on do you use?
I use Facebook Container which isolates any webpage that connects with facebook from the rest of my tabs. It also has separate containers for things like work, shopping, etc you can optionally use for whatever.
It’s very convenient to just open a “shopping” container tab to check my spam email address instead of opening a private window and needing to sign in each time.
Earlier, I tried Google Chrome’s “profiles” but damn, how inconvenient they are. I ended up opening multiple windows.
Firefox, on the other hand, only uses a single window for multiple tab containers and accounts.
They are fantastic! Way better than having 6 seperate “browser profiles” open. 🙄
For sure, Aws sso containers is a bloody game changer
I have this extension and I always thought it’s duty was to contain Amazon services from interacting with my other sites i.e., stop Amazon trackers. Can you explain to me more how to use container tabs?
Amazon and facebook containers are limited versions of the containers extension used to isolate only specific websites. Use “furefox multi-account containers” for general usage.
Switched back in the summer for good. Use Firefox in my android as the default browser with DuckDuckGo as search engine. The issue is still relying on the android digital hemisphere as the default OS for my phone.
Edit : The only thing lacking is tab management. I know there is an extension. But it doesn’t satisfy.
I never stopped. since it was Phoenix.
but really since noscript. i used and abused that add on for more than a decade. coming up on 2. never found anything better.
focus is also used on mobile.
I use Firefox Focus as my default browser, and use that to “open in” Firefox if I want my session kept for any reason, or Chrome if it’s a Google related thing, sometimes.
For almost everything I click through especially out of an app, Firefox Focus is fully appropriate.
Firefox kind of sucks in android though and there are no good forks imo, but this is also true for chromium so idk what to do.
Switch? I never left!
I deeply regret leaving.
Growing up, I used Firefox on PC, but switched to Chrome early 2010s due to using a lot of google products for university work, and the general “google is cool” vibe that surrounded me from peers (tech/business student).
Now after a decade, I’m deeply entrenched in Google with bookmarks, passwords and habits. Only progress I made is switching to iOS from Android. Installed Ff on mobile, but didn’t really like the experience, so not really using it.
Will probably try to make a stronger push to invest some time and switch completely during Xmas break, as it does bother me to be part of the problem, though I hate how convenient not doing anything about it is.
Aren’t all browsers on ios just Safari with a different skin?
Yes but using Firefox you get bookmarks and history synced.
I was in the exact same boat as you. Except I also switched because Bitdefender, the anti-virus I used at the time, was not playing nice with Firefox.
Earlier this year, like a few months ago, I decided to try and switch back. It was seamless. In like half an hour I had every bookmark, most passwords, and even some new extensions that have saved me a lot of work since. I recommend you try it and keep Chrome installed on the side in case you run into some problems, but I think after a few days you’ll realize you don’t need it for much.
(in my case it’s still installed for when I inevitably remember that I forgot to transfer a random password that didn’t automatically migrate)
Apple might be the one company that is even worse than Google
Only progress I made is switching to iOS from Android
“progress”
I had a similar history to you.
I finally decided a couple months back to start de-googling and did the following so far:
- switched Google Password Manager to VaultWarden
- switched Google Search Engine to searxng
- switched Google Keep to Obsidian/memos
- switched Google Drive/Office to Cryptpad
- switched Google Chrome desktop to LibreWolf
- switched Google Chrome Mobile to Fennec F-droid
Only progress I made is switching to iOS from Android. Installed Ff on mobile, but didn’t really like the experience, so not really using it.
Well if you switched to iOS then there’s not really much point as the browser backend is still the same as Safari there. Apple doesn’t allow other browser engines so on iOS Firefox/Chrome/etc are all just wrappers on Apple’s browser engine.
Apple is worse than Google in many ways and if you wanted to maintain control over your privacy (and even just de-google) you ironically would be better off staying on Android.
There are many great custom firmwares available for Android devices such as GrapheneOS which can truly de-google your device.
To be fair, Chrome was vastly superior to Firefox for ages in the early 2010’s
Porting your bookmarks back is easy. I had a similar experience except I switched back to Firefox in 2015.
If you use Firefox sync on PC and your phone, all your open tabs and bookmarks will be synced automatically.
Same! The extensions are just to damned useful!
Exactly. I’ve been here since Netscape Navigator.
There are dozens of us!
Got here from iCab.
I did. Chrome updated plugins automatically, Firefox didn’t. Also one bad tab didn’t kill the whole browser.
Plugins are dead now, so I switched back. I’ve still had to kill FF in task manager, due to some weird PSN login bug.
Same. Literally been a user since version 1.
Was always really surprised everyone thought it was a great idea to jump ship to a browser made by the largest dataminer and internet ad company in the world. What’s happening right now with Chrome and YouTube is entirely unsurprising. It was just a matter of time.
-🗿
Had pentadactyl survived the infamous extension API change (or something like that, don’t remember anymore) I would’ve never left FF. However, I finally made it back, thanks to tridactyl.
The best time was 15 years ago
Personally I’ve never left Firefox. Used to develop on it when it was still called Mozilla, and I’m happy it’s still around. Privacy is a major strength of it compared to other browsers.
Have they addressed the security issues with sandboxing and site isolation and added a web view on android yet? I’d love to use Firefox on my phone too, but those issues were big enough for GrapheneOS to recommend against gecko-based browsers (though fortunately they provide their own de-googled chromium-based browser Vanadium):
Avoid Gecko-based browsers like Firefox as they’re currently much more vulnerable to exploitation and inherently add a huge amount of attack surface. Gecko doesn’t have a WebView implementation (GeckoView is not a WebView implementation), so it has to be used alongside the Chromium-based WebView rather than instead of Chromium, which means having the remote attack surface of two separate browser engines instead of only one. Firefox / Gecko also bypass or cripple a fair bit of the upstream and GrapheneOS hardening work for apps. Worst of all, Firefox does not have internal sandboxing on Android. This is despite the fact that Chromium semantic sandbox layer on Android is implemented via the OS isolatedProcess feature, which is a very easy to use boolean property for app service processes to provide strong isolation with only the ability to communicate with the app running them via the standard service API. Even in the desktop version, Firefox’s sandbox is still substantially weaker (especially on Linux) and lacks full support for isolating sites from each other rather than only containing content as a whole. The sandbox has been gradually improving on the desktop but it isn’t happening for their Android browser yet.
I love GrapheneOS and they tried everything to make Chromium less shitty, but Vanadium still lacks fingerprinting protection as well as support for ad blocking. That’s why I use Mull, a hardened fork of Firefox, for everything except banking.
Sadly there’s often a tradeoff between privacy and security (even though you often get one with the other), and GrapheneOS has always prioritised security
I like Graphene as an OS, they also make great privacy improvements, e.g. they hide all unique device identifiers from apps in order to make you anonymous. You don’t have to use their pre-installed apps, I use Mull and Firefox Focus for everything except banking and other stuff that requires me to interact with payment processors, as they often flag or even suspend your account when using hardened Firefox.
I’m using jerboa, and any links open in a firefox webview, with an option to (ninstantly, without reloading) opening the page in the firefox app directly
That might be a Custom Tab.
Nice, maybe it has been fixed since that doc was written?
For people asking, add-ons work fine on Nightly.
I switched to Nightly because standard FF doesn’t have the add-ons I want. I can confirm they work great.
My biggest thing is all the news stories are msn web links. Maybe there’s a way to change that? It’s super annoying
Oh god turn off all that crap in the settings.
Since version 120 is coming to mobile soon with about 200 extensions (as mentioned in the article), can anyone recommend some good extensions that are newly added? I have ublock origin, HD YouTube, Google search fixer, clear url fixer, dark reader, privacy badger, and ghostery
You don’t need Privacy Badger and Ghostery anymore if you turn the Enhanced Tracking Protection up to “strict” in settings.
Ghostery has been great for denying cookie pop-ups. I don’t think this setting will replace this feature?
Edit…
Nevermind. I just read this comment which suggests uBlock Origin can also handle cookies!
Oh even better! I would rather have settings in my browser instead of relying on extensions anyway. One of the many things I love about Firefox
You’ve hit all the great ones, most of which were already available.
Have you added the bypass paywall clean filter list to ublock? Here’s the url you can copy paste under “import” in the ublock addon settings: https://gitlab.com/magnolia1234/bypass-paywalls-clean-filters/-/raw/main/bpc-paywall-filter.txt
I haven’t done this. Thank you so much for this suggestion!
Try libredirect, it automatically redirects links from twitter, youtube, imgur and many other spying platforms to alternative privacy friendly frontends. It is also very customizable: you can turn only some redirects and configure what particular site to use for each platform.
Good suggestion! I haven’t heard of this before and it seems like a great tool considering how much things have changed recently on these platforms
You can also drop ClearURLs filter. Better filters that are more up to date exists exists on uBlock like Adguard URL Tracking Protection and Actually Legitimate URL Shortener Tool.
I wasn’t aware. It really seems like uBlock origin can do everything I had all those extra extensions for! Pretty impressive
Yes. It’s really a powerful tool that helps to keep the Web tidy and sane.
What amazes me is how much of the web is practically unusable without it… And yet the majority of users don’t have it
If LibRedirect becomes available, then definitely that. Redirects links from at this point twenty different services to more privacy-friendly frontends
Thanks for the tip! That sounds like a great extension.
I think ghostery is owned by an ad company. I wouldn’t trust it.
Seriously? I had no idea. That’s kind of ironic if it is
Yeah, privacy badger and ghostery are no longer recommended, unlock origin will do their job (better).
What’s wrong with Privacy Badger? Isn’t that from EFF?
There’s nothing wrong with it, it’s just not needed if FF blocks all 3rd party cookies outright. Privacy Badger was supposed to autodetect which 3rd party cookies were used to track you, there’s no point if they’re all blocked.
If you have sites that need 3rd party cookies to work please note you can add exceptions in FF settings. I’ve seen instructions telling people to disable tracking protection altogether in that case but that’s a terrible idea.
Google rewrites links in Google search (not that you use it but maybe you do sometimes). So, if you want the links you click in Google search to not go through a Google referral URL and instead go to the link advertised in the search result, then Privacy Badger is useful for this purpose.
I’m surprised I haven’t heard this before. Thanks! I will proceed to only use uBlock Origin from now on (although I really enjoy the auto-reject cookies)
uBlock can disable cookie popups, go to settings, filters and then scroll down to annoyances. Enable AdGuard Cookiebanners and Easylist Cookiebanners
Do I need to adjust any settings?
If only I could get MS Teams to work in it 😭
I use the web version.
