Brave vs. Firefox vs. Safari?

Been using edge occasionally as well that and VSCode seems to indicate MS is moving in the right direction and this from a 12+ years exclusive Mac user

Edge also has privacy built in but off to check out brave on a spare MacMini now

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Was looking into Brave as well. Although nothing wrong with Firefox which is my default browser for a long time now.
However, on MacUpdate Brave has a pretty poor rating. I know that doesn’t mean a lot. But still wondering if people here know where that low score is coming from.

Each rating is essentially a self-selecting poll on a niche website, with free, anonymous voting accounts and votes subject to brigading. I’ve been a paying member for a decade but I don’t pay attention to the easily manipulable ratings.

Subscription apps on that site tend to be downvoted, as do competitors to Firefox.

We see this behavior all over the web. Apple bought a well-regarded Android data-migration app for moving to iOS and its ratings got trashed in the Google Play Store immediately on announcement of the purchase.

I’ve used Brave. It’s rock-solid and a fine browser choice. As is Firefox. The only reasons I stick with Safari are consistency with the iPad/iPhone, and integration with Keychain and Apple Pay. I also think the readability view in Safari is the best out there.

There are rumors that Apple may let you change your default browser and email client in iOS 14. If that is the case, I will likely experiment more aggressively with alternative browsers.

I will do likewise! I would prefer to use Brave but sync is not currently available and it is a pain to have one default on the Mac and other on iOS.

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On my iPad I’d change to iCab. By far the most flexible browser on that platform, IMHO.

I might give Brave a go, Although I’m pretty fine with Firefox. For memory and battery usage I would use Safari on macOS. A few drawbacks keep me from using it. First of all, I don’t like the way extensions work in that browser (and a few missing extensions too). Secondly I’m missing separators in my bookmarks, I know it sounds silly, but I do like the fact that I can put some lines in between my bookmarks in Firefox.

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Since Brave can import Safari bookmarks why not just use Safari on iOS? (After all, all iOS browsers are using Apple-mandated Safari/Webkit under the hood anyway.)

I could see it being a pain if you constantly switch from open browsers on Mac to iOS and back, but I don’t. And I use 1Password for my logins, which works fine on iOS and with the 1P app and Chromium extension.

With Brave and extensions which don’t exist on Safari my privacy is better protected as well. Brave builds in the uBlock Origin ad blocker, and it can be used in conjunction with other blocker extensions (which again are unavailable on Safari). For instance, a few moments ago I was reading an article on the Los Angeles Times website, and I was astonished by the number and variety of trackers and cookies the site tried to apply:



And that doesn’t even count the polling it would have made to a Google-based CDN (which would add its info to a user profile) if I hadn’t used an extension (yet again unavailable on Safari) which maintains resources locally that otherwise would have gone out to a CDN.

So while sync is being retooled in Brave may be a little inconvenient for people wanting to do website handoffs, the tradeoff is worth it for the additional privacy.

I don’t agree. For this article, for example, look at the difference between Safari:

and Brave (using the Just Read extension - I customized the link color & font):

Plus the Just Read extension has numerous stylesheets to choose from and download.

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@bowline What are the browser extensions you are using in Brave? Specifically for privacy.

I use a belt-and-suspenders approach, and some of the extensions I use have overlapping utility. In most cases there isn’t a conflict.

Brave comes built in with ad-block (and auto HTTPS-upgrade), apparently they have bundled in uBlock Origin. I add to that a competitor/spinoff of uBlock, a pair of sister extensions Nano Adblocker and Nano Defender. On rare occasions they conflict with Brave’s built-in blocker so I’ll toggle off either adblocker for a specific site or two.

I use DecentralEyes to place locally data that otherwise would be polled by Content Delivery Networks (like those owned Google Hosted Libraries and offered to websites for free) which enable the CDNs to track and build dossiers on users.

I use Gmail in the browser, and use the PixelBlock extension that blocks 1-pixel tracking ‘images’ embedded in emails that allow senders to determine if you’ve opened their email.

There’s a well-known privacy extension called Privacy Badger from the Electronic Freedom Foundation, but I use a more powerful spinoff from a former PB developer called Privacy Possum which has been called “Privacy Badger on steroids”. It not only blocks referrer headers and etag headers to prevent tracking, it also will inject randomized user ID data sent by the browser to change the browser’s ‘fingerprint’.

I also have installed DuckDuckGo Privacy Essentials which offers https upgrades (already in Brave) and tracker blocking (like other extensions). Like I said, belt-and-suspenders.

Unshorten Link gives me an interstitial warning page when I click on a short-link, and tells me what the expanded link is to, so I can decide if I want to pass through to that site. I used this for several months then found it to be annoying, so I’ve temporarily turned it off.

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Coming soon, finally. Currently in the nightly beta build.

https://twitter.com/brave/status/1273767579601887232

Yes, finally! Now I’ll give Brave another shot!

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While I love Safari’s look, as other’s have stated, the extension ecosystem is far too limiting. Pretty much every feature can be replicated on Brave, and then some. Extensions are pretty much required for my workflow and browser usage. Plus, Brave is great for privacy, which is something I care about.

The only thing missing is sync, which is being worked on and will be available soon. Brave is still a fairly new product.