I’m currently using Librewolf primarily, as it has good out of the box privacy settings. I really just added Ublock Origin on top of it. I’ve recently seen another uptick in Zen recommendations though, and I must admit that I like the UI. I’m sure it has worse defaults than Librewolf, so what are the things I should probably apply and what extensions should I download for some extra privacy?
And is the browser even any good beyond the initial impression?
As others have said, it’s my daily driver. I like the vertical tabs, sessions, and pinned tabs. I saw someone mention you can’t watch TV or Movies through it, but I haven’t had issues with any of the main streaming sites, or the more unconventional free sites that exist, but yeah you will need to make adjustments for it to match LibreWolf privacy-wise
Zen is basically Firefox with different UI. It is a security/privacy downgrade from Librewolf. You can configure Zen to have the same security/privacy settings by putting
about:configin the URL bar change some of the toggles.Use either the Arkenfox (also available in the interactive live viewer online) or Phoenix user.js as a template. Basically: disable WebGL, set WebRTC to disable nonproxied udp, disable JavaScript JIT, enable privacy.resistFingerprinting (optionally enable privacy.resistFingerprinting.letterboxing for screen fingerprint protection) and some other things.
Phoenix has some configs for Zen iirc which you can just patch. It is less strict than Librewolf when it comes to fingerprint protections (softening some of RFP’s protections).
If you want to test that the fingerprint protections are working, use this test site by Arkenfox called TorZillaPrint.
Ublock is added by default to librewolf, unless you installed it in an unconventional way.
When it comes to zen I haven’t really seen a compelling reason for it. I care about privacy more than functionality, but I don’t really want to go about hardening a whole new browser.
I have found that using PWAs with librewolf as the engine is very in lign with my mental image of how to run things.
Love it, but it ate all my links on an update, and what’s worse; Users have complained about it for a long time. Perhaps someone else know the details of that story…
It’s beautiful, and very functionally intuitive for me. Still use it with a tab-save addon until problem is fixed.
My main browser ! Much better than vanilla Firefox U[XI] wise , specially can’t live without Glance feature , simply can’t go back !
Tho seen peops saying it uses lotsa (CPU|RAM) forgot wich one , personally haven’t noticed much difference on my machine
Some downsides :
- No portable windows app
policies.jsondœsn’t seem to work , therefore can’t fully disable update messages- Stable version wen
Completely subjective, I am just not a fan of the UI. I’ve been sticking with Librewolf. Tinkering with Orion on Mac. And I am keeping an eye on LadyBird
It’s currently my daily driver, seems to work fine. Though on my macbook, I can’t move the address bar to anything other than the sidebar.
Not sure why(I think I just found out how to do that, in the settings, but I’ll have to check tomorrow evening, when I’m back home if my hunch is true). On my windows laptop no such issue.Also my daily. I’ve been a vertical tab person for many years with treestyle tabs and then sidebery. The tab management features in zen without the need of extensions is the primary selling point for me. Everything just works smoothly for my workflow and the UI is well thought out. I haven’t had any issues with stability or memory usage since moving over from firefox.
It seems nice enough design-wise at first, but I guess I’m too used to a richer interface so it just isn’t for me.
You can’t watch tv or film on Zen cause it doesn’t have license for that
I like zen, but their plugin section needs work. With the layout of Zen being what it is, when you display plugins on the toolbar, it distorts the UI and looks funky.
Plugins are now a popup at the end of the address bar, works for me, although most commonly used are still in the toolbar, which looks cluttered because of it. Still happy with the get out of the way design philosophy.
It’s my daily. Is very nice.
