I had an odyssey of discovery a year-ish ago, and landed on Vivaldi. I like that it’s Chromium-based, so extensions are readily available. I liked the web panels. And my workflow heavily benefits from the Workspaces feature.
Lately there have been a bunch of little papercuts. These in particular:
Tabs from previous session completely disappearing (the setting is correct, and I know they’re in the Trash - but it’s kind of ridiculous)
Random stalls. No typing/clicking/etc., sometimes for maybe 15-30 seconds at a time. Other apps on my Mac are fine. And this is a 36 GB MBP.
So I’m looking through my list of requirements, and considering a new browser. Important/critical features:
Workspaces
Sidebar tabs
Tab suspension/memory usage
Good ad blocking
Bonus - the ability to route tabs to workspaces based on URL, keywords, etc.
If Brave did workspaces, I’d be using it. But that’s a “roadmap” sort of feature for them apparently, possibly not existing for another year or more. And I need more than one or two workspaces, so things like Profiles aren’t a useful workaround.
Last I checked, Edge requires the Microsoft account to use their implementation of workspaces. I don’t need (or want) cloud sync of that stuff.
Which current browsers would you suggest I take a look at?
Conceptually speaking, workspaces are a level above groups.
In a standard browser window, you have tabs and groups of tabs. A workspace lets you separate multiple instances of “tabs and groups of tabs”, and switch rapidly back and forth between different workspaces.
My gripe with Safari used to be that its tab suspension was pretty miserable, and the extensions were severely lacking. Maybe it’s time to give it another shot?
I have been agonizing over browsers for a while. I even have a running numbers document rating various features.
I currently use Edge. I like workspaces and it is easiest to use with my work account by just swapping between personal and work profiles. I really want the profile switching of arc with the tab auto-grouping of Dia and the site search/work integration of edge, with a history sync to mac ecosystem devices, but that is asking a lot.
Edge is good enough although its Workspaces implementation does not isolate cookies. Also is an alien in the macOS environment, so it doesn’t support any Shortcuts/AppleScript automation.
In Firefox the cookie isolation (containers) is cumbersome and too complicated for my taste. And visual workspaces are not exactly there unless you use Zen Browser.
Safari is still Safari. Either it works for your workflow or it doesn’t. In its family, Orion in my opinion could have everything including profiles but as far as I know, other than the default profile, they don’t sync.
Probably the browser that would best fit the bill is still Arc, but obviously the future is in Dia, which is catching up --they recently added syncing workspaces and have not ditched bookmarks as in Arc, which is critical for my usage. For the time being I just use Safari for personal browsing and Edge for work, although I keep an eye on almost every browser out there.
On a side note, I cannot stress enough the convenience of having your bookmarks outside your browser if you want to be a “browser nomad”. I used to use Anybox but now I’ve resorted to just drag and drop .webloc files to a regular Finder folder.
I use Dia, mainly because I loved Arc and wanted to continue on TBC «newest endeavours».
It’s taken some time, but it’s starting to be very close to what Arc was/is.
I think the AI features are well built, epecially love the “morning Brief” but don’t really use it due to company policies and I have also built my own robot that does it now.
I’ve not used Workspace before but from your description, I think that the “Chrome profile” might works. I have 6 user profiles, each for one project, and colored accordingly. At a glance of my desktop, pink browsers are for Project A. Blue browsers are for Project B. Within each profiles, it remembered it’s own set of passwords, groups and tabs. It also have its own cookies.
A thumbs up for Chrome + profiles. I have several, although mine are allocated amongst my various personal and professional roles. Chrome now has vertical browser tabs now, too. I use both Chrome and Arc regularly, but for different things.
I use profiles in Edge which do isolate cookies, so I have one for work and one for personal. I just really appreciate that there’s at least one more level of hierarchy in the middle, between cookie isolation (profiles) and tab groups, which most browsers seem to be missing. In this way Edge seems strictly better than other browsers.
I do need to develop a non-browser-centric bookmark approach. The simplicity of .webloc files is appealing. I’m also dabbling with Devonthink, but I think things like Anybox are rough because I can never remember where something “lives”, so I’ve started to just default back to the native filesystem or similar.
I’m currently using Anybox. I realize that making a webloc basically just involves dragging the URL to a folder, but do you have any other support systems in place for this? Dropzone type stuff, for example? Automation? Or do you just open the folder with your bookmarks and drag the URL every time you want to save one?
My choice in 2026 is the same as my choice in 2006 — Firefox. Whether on my Macs or my RaspberyPi 500+ the Firefox setup is the same; internal custom settings on Privacy — it’s locked down tight — then there are the Ghostery, uBlockOrigin, and Privacy Badger add-ons installed. (And for troublesome sites that G, U, and P don’t fully handle there is also GreaseMonkey). Includes FBPurity which cleans up Facebook. If those add-ons compete and thereby slow my browser down so be it; better that than seeing any ad crap splattered on my screen.
I suppose I have “workspaces” by opening multiple windows dedicated to specific topics. For example there is a window eclusively for Discourse-based forums, such as MBP. Another for a language course I am taking (together with Anki and Quizlet pages to help with vocabulary acquition). All the AI LLMs are bracketed together in a separate window. And several more serving my diverse and eclectic interests.
Long story short, there would have to be some major issue with Firefox for me to switch to something else. As to Safari on my Macs that only serves to bootstrap FIrefox.
Yes, as simple as that. I have also used Sindre Sorhus’ Folder Peek so that the bookmarks folder is always in the menubar but these days I just keep a Hammerspoon keybinding that opens the main bookmarks folder (or a specific subfolder, for example “Work > Working Projects”) in a new Finder window. And for cross-machine sync, iCloud Drive (and even OneDrive, Google Drive and I guess Dropbox too) does the job.
Regarding Anybox, there are few applications as extremely good: it has everything one could ever dream for an app of its class, including a good lifetime subscription but for some reason… it just didn’t stick with me, perhaps it’s trying to do many things at the same time hence the “I don’t know where things live here” feeling that @tylerroche reports.
Agreed. I absolutely don’t regret giving them my money. I’m kind of in the boat you’re in though - it just seems a bit…“much”. I might try DEVONthink for managing my bookmarks. I know it’s massive overkill, but it seems like a good option for searchability and easy of getting things into it.
Bringing a machine gun to a sword fight, yes. But if memory serves, it will open the bookmark inside the DT window, which is pretty convenient (also, DT remembers sessions so, for example, your Google Docs will always be there once you login into Google inside DT). Also, you could store the bookmarks outside DT and just index that folder so you can have both a DT and a Finder-only workflow for your bookmarks.
Nothing beats Arc or Zen for workspaces and sidebar tabs. But I have issues with both of them, especially regarding how much RAM they use. Back to Safari for me, but I hope they implement better workspaces. I basically need to have two separate windows open all the time and cycle through them but the CMD + ~ works well enough.
