this post was submitted on 01 Sep 2025

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I switched from chrome to firefox and it's SHOCKINGLY bad (hexbear.net)

submitted 1 week ago by kleeon@hexbear.net to c/technology@hexbear.net

116 comments fedilink hide all child comments

God I wish chrome didn't remove manifest v2 meow-tableflip

Here is the list of things that piss me off about firefox:

It is dogshit slow
It eats up a ludicrous amounts of RAM, which I wasn't expecting since it's one of the main things people make fun of chrome for
It crashes constantly
It tries to push it's "AI" bullshit on me despite me turning it off on multiple occasions
It puts ads on my home page
It needs to be relaunched regularly because at some point it becomes too laggy to use. It even stops loading pages altogether
"Restore previous session" feature doesn't work half the time so restarting the browser is absolutely terrifying
Profile management is a mess

Are there any alternatives? Is Brave any good?

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[–] SorosFootSoldier@hexbear.net 6 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I have an old laptop and ff ran really bad on it, especially with ublock installed. I'm forced to use chrome, so far I've been happy with it, but it sucks being saddled with more google slop.

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[–] bigpharmasutra@hexbear.net 6 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Base Firefox is pretty terrible but with the right addons you can turn it into whatever you want. I'm more privacy focused so all my stuff is aimed at that. Definitely look up something like arkenfox (https://github.com/arkenfox/user.js) to get a sense of all the bullshit options you need to turn off.

Someone else mentioned Librewolf but there's also Palemoon:

https://www.palemoon.org/

and Orion by the Kagi people:

https://kagi.com/orion/

Brave is dogshit for privacy. If you need recommendations on addons feel free to ask. Definitely start with uBlock Origin. Its legitimately the best thing on the internet.

[–] Enjoyer_of_Games@hexbear.net 6 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Librewolf is really the safest bet.

It's the least divergent from firefox such that you're not going to have issues with websites not working etc like Palemoon (whose developers are also pretty sus).

And if a browser made by Kagi isn't already pushing AI even harder than firefox then it's only a matter of time until it is.

[–] bigpharmasutra@hexbear.net 4 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Well, at this point EVERYTHING is pushing AI, so I honestly wouldn't use that as a barometer of whether or not the browser was any good.

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[–] TerkErJerbs@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 points 1 week ago (1 children)

If you weren't already using some type of local or remote blocking with chrome... You should with any browser. You can use DNS or a firewall to prevent any browser (and extensions therein) from phoning home and/or serving you bullshit.

[–] kleeon@hexbear.net 4 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I have adguard and technitium dns on my home server to block ads/bypass censorship. Is there anything else that's good to have?

[–] TerkErJerbs@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Those are good options. You should be able to find the domains serving ads/ai and block them. I've never seen an ad in Firefox other than their getpocket shit which i just block with DNS and disable in the app.

You can also plug one of these resolvers directly into the browser to nuke things at that level (adguard might offer this too I've never used it) https://controld.com/free-dns

[–] bigpharmasutra@hexbear.net 5 points 1 week ago

Since I keep mentioning privacy this is probably a good guide to post:

https://www.privacytools.io/private-browser

[–] git@hexbear.net 5 points 1 week ago

If you want minimal disruption from your existing workflow then use https://github.com/ungoogled-software/ungoogled-chromium. They are currently maintaining manifest v2 functionality.

[–] CountryBreakfast@lemmygrad.ml 5 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I just can't imagine caring about the idiosyncrasies of web browsers

[–] CloutAtlas@hexbear.net 4 points 1 week ago

Netscape Navigator gang

[–] Robert_Kennedy_Jr@hexbear.net 5 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I've moved to Zen since Firefox started to enshitify

https://zen-browser.app/

[–] blobjim@hexbear.net 4 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (2 children)

Zen is based on Firefox but I guess they enable or disable different features and change the UI.

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[–] alienzx@feddit.nl 4 points 1 week ago

I switched to Vivaldi after a similar thread a few months ago and I couldn't be happier.

[–] Guamer@hexbear.net 4 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Yeah, the default Firefox experience was pretty bad when I tried it out recently. I'm back on Chrome for now since ublock lite seems to work fine getting rid of youtube ads (The primary reason I tried switching in the first place, since chrome now blocks regular ublock origin). If I ever make a serious attempt to try again, I'll try some of the changes suggested here.

[–] KnilAdlez@hexbear.net 4 points 1 week ago

I do have issues with it taking a while to start, but other than that, I have had no issues. I have turned off AI and ads and they have stayed off. On my 64gb system it uses 0.5 gb of memory. Profiles currently is bad, but there is an update that fixes it soon. In the meantime you can group tabs together and it will remember them in between restarts (Though not between updates, which is annoying).

[–] pinguinu@lemmygrad.ml 4 points 1 week ago

As others users have commented, FF crashing is very strange. I've only had it crash when programming a WebGPU site on Nightly, and I've been using it for like 10 years. Though it is true that I don't like keeping many tabs open

[–] Awoo@hexbear.net 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I'll give you that it crashes constantly. I have had crashing problems with firefox for the last couple of months. Wasn't happening before.

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[–] gayspacemarxist@hexbear.net 3 points 1 week ago

I use Mullvad Browser, which i believe is based on Tor Browser which is based on Firefox ESR. The defaults aren't the most comfy, but I like that I'm mostly relaxing the default policy instead of patching holes.

I agree that base Firefox is not that good, I hope u find a good downstream that works for u.

[–] gay_king_prince_charles@hexbear.net 3 points 1 week ago

I apologize for saying this, but iwomm. Librewolf fixes the ads and AI, I cannot reproduce the RAM issues (it uses less than chrome for me), crashing, speed and need for relaunch. The profiles and session restoration do suck though.

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