I use “strict” mode and manually allow and disallow domains with Little Snitch for all browsers. I love that control. But, I do have allow/disallow for each browser over and over
That’s intense. Nice. I have LS but I’m way too passive/permissive with it.
I’ve been using Brave for the last few months and really like it. Also use Firefox. I do use Bumpr as my “default” browser. It’s a nifty utility that will allow you to select which browser you want to open clicked-on links with.
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No, those things are baked in.
Connections are upgraded to https when possible. Ads, trackers, cross-site trackers, etc. are blocked. They can be selectively turned off for sites that aren’t well behaved.
(I’m not familiar with uBlock, but assuming it is an ad/tracking blocker.)
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I’m also a big fan of Brave. Do be aware that Brave Sync has been broken since early February and it’s unclear when it will be fixed. So there is currently no built-in way to sync Brave bookmarks across devices.
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Not really, they are built it. However I have added the twin extensions Nano Adblocker and Nano Defender to Brave to kill any ads that sneak through (there really aren’t many) but also to hide sidebars on some sites I regularly visit.
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Besides extensions, I like Chrome for is multiple profiles. That way I can log into the same site with different accounts simultaneously and also have separate sets of bookmarks for personal non-business, personal business, and employer accounts.
I tend to keep things separate as it’s helps me focus on the task at hand.
For Privacy and Security reasons, I use Firefox as my main browser. My secondary browser is Vivaldi and thirdly Safari. I do have Chrome installed as “completely open” (basically a vanilla install) so I can compare security/privacy settings (which can be eye-opening if you care about those things, which you probably should). However, if I need the Chromium rendering engine, it is what other browsers (like Vivaldi) has anyway.
Because of the dodgy funding schemas Brave had I went with other alternatives than Brave, though I quite liked it as a browser when I first tried it out.
I’m a full time Firefox user, But out of curiosity I tested Vivaldi this morning. It seemed noticeably slower than Firefox. Especially when scrolling image heavy websites.
Vivaldi looks better than Firefox. But I’m not willing to compromise speed. Especially not when it’s this obvious.
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Yeah. Vivaldi is very cool and provides an insane amount of flexibility. Unfortunately, the slow downs and battery hogging are a deal breaker. I pretty much only use it now when I want a full page screenshot and don’t have my iPad nearby.
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I forgot to add, and you guys probably know this too, but if you do run Safari, installing Better Blocker is a good thing. https://apps.apple.com/se/app/better-blocker/id1121192229?l=en&mt=12
I’m not affiliated to ind.ie, the company behind Better Blocker, in any way, but I know they are a not-for-profit and both Aral and Laura (the two people behind ind.ie) have been prominent (and much appreciated) speakers on various (design/development) conferences I’ve attended over the years.
Although I own 1Blocker, I got Better on sale in the MAS in 2018 for 99¢ and decided it worked as well as 1Blocker (yet without the comprehensive customization). Good blocker, never felt a need to switch away. Easily worth the current $1.99.
Started using it and like it so far. I coupled it with Choosy to open all my work-related links there instead of Safari. It’s a nice setup so far. What are the key benefits over Chrome though?
Better than Adblock and other similar tools?
First off, welcome to the community!
Thanks for that tip I hadn’t used Firefox for years and was not planning to until I saw the Multi-Account container you mentioned. Sounds like something very useful. So far I use Safari for personal and use Choosy to automatically route work links to open in Brave (that I just started using).
Any thoughts on Firefox performance compared with Chrome/Brave?
I can’t answer that scientifically as I haven’t made an accurate comparison.
I do know that when I was researching adblockers from various sources (as a user, not as in an official investigation), I found not all of them were actually trust-worthy. Some were allowing selected advertisers. Some sold information of their users, etc. That is outside the scope of the actual technical functionality of the add-on/extension etc. With Aral & Laura I simply “trust them”, which can be vague and very unscientific for someone else of course. They both have been fighting tirelessly for privacy issues and the open web for many years. I would trust them to babysit my kids. I’m dead certain they would never sell on my details or allow some ads and not others etc. They update Better frequently too with new/better rules.
Here are some reviews (from their web site, so probably biased, but I assume you can find those reviews in the app store too): https://better.fyi/reviews/
In Safari it is my main blocker, and I’ve been happy with it so far. In Firefox I use a combination of uBlock Origin, Privacy Badger and Ghostery. I have an article written on how I’ve set that up if anyone would be interested (but I’m not here to market my blog and I don’t know about the community policy here for those things, so send me a message and I can send you the link. My blog is tracker/advertising free btw).
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The main one is not being spied on as you use the browser.
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Thanks for the welcome!
I found it used to be poor, and Chrome outdid Firefox, but in the last few years, they’ve pulled back the gap and I don’t really notice any difference between the two. Other than the Multi Account Container that keeps me coming back to Firefox, Chrome’s inability to follow macOS guidelines annoys me - why do I need to CMD+Q and hold to close? Why change the default behaviour!
Personally haven’t tried Brave so can’t answer that one. I did use Vivialdi for a period of time,which uses the Chrome engine and I did like that, but I think it’s the container that pulled me back to Firefox as well!
In terms of adblocking, I run a Pi-Hole server, so that takes in to account all my devices, without having to worry about apps.
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Another vote for Mozilla Firefox! I use it in conjunction with Mozilla Thunderbird and Mozilla Sunbird.
Firefox is very battery efficient when browsing sites like the MacRumors Forums. Safari has never really been battery efficient on that site.
Stick with Safari and Firefox. Chromium browsers are usually too power hungry.
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