Chromium has better features, but with google announcing its plan to ‘drm the internet’ I 'm not sure if it’d be a good idea.
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What better features? Firefox has pretty much everything nowadays, and is as fast as Chrome.
From the comments I’m noticing a trend
- Google Chromecast issues
- Not allowed to do background effects in Google meet
and from personal experience:
- issues using the store to update add-ons on Google docs
- can’t authenticate desktop Google drive
I use a lot of Google products, but avoid Chrome because of nonsense like this. Firefox works fine for everything else EXCEPT certain Google products. Feels intentional
100% intentional. If you spoof your browser signature most work just fine
Same with Edge and Microsoft with their Bing bullshit. Big anticonsumer bullies and they wonder why their online share is stuck.
Google Meet background effects actually work in Firefox if you spoof Firefox user agent to Chrome, I kid you not.
It should work soon without it. Google is just being google and takes its time to fix the problem they created in the first place.
The only time I use chromium is to attach a debugger to GWT (yes, the “G” stands for Google). It runs like absolute trash in Firefox.
Everything else runs better in FF.
I have the same experience. At my last company they only used Google meet so I had chrome on my computer just for meetings and nothing else.
This is exactly why companies spend money on marketing, people remember these ideas and internalize them as their justification long after it stops being true. And Chrome being fast hasn’t been true for a long time.
It still wins most benchmarks, so it’s technically true. Although not really enough to matter on desktop where it’s millisecond differences
I can confirm this, Chrome wins the benchmark tests and some CSS rendering but lags behind in DX. I’m not sure where OP got the idea that Firefox has fewer features from a developer POV.
It doesn’t have translations. I use it anyway, but it’s a minor inconvenience as I live in a foreign country.
Translations might be coming soon
Done locally on the device, so no risk of personal info going to some company
Nice!
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I use an extension for translations and it works just fine
Firefox always memory bloats out on me. Mobile app crashes.
I switched to Brave then moved to Vivaldi. I’ll revisit if FF gets more stable.
Native procedural dark mode, Developer CSS Overview, browser extension file access.
I use Firefox exclusively except for when the second one is useful. I really wish Firefox had those three though.
Edge’s vertical tabs and grouping. Every solution on Firefox feels half-baked.
Chromium browsers have only 1 feature I need: access to the Chromecast API. I have 3, Firefox can’t connect to them and the last 2-3 times I tried the listed 3rd party methods (fx bridge, etc), I could never get it to work.
Were it not for that, I’d be back on Firefox.
That’s part of why I avoided getting new Chromecast devices 😄
well? what do you have? I would love to flush my chromecasts but they’re so useful.
If you ever find one let me know because I’m in the exact same boat as you. Casting videos to my TV is so damn convenient
I had a similar need, and it prevented me from moving to FireFox for a long while. Luckily, I did manage to get fx_cast to work, and it’s been flawless ever since. In fact, I’d say it work more reliably than Chrome’s casting!
Have you tried setting
browser.casting.enabled = truein Firefox’s about:config settings?Trust me, I’ve tried everything there is. For hours, literally. Nothing worked.
(Casting from Firefox (beta) on Android.)
That’s a bummer. Personally, I use an app made to cast web video on android because it has better casting experience (including subtitles support) and wider range of supported websites. The dev is also responsive and would push a fix if you report any site where it doesn’t work: Web Video Caster
Thanks for the suggestion, I’ll definitely try it out.
Agreed, it’s an amazing app, well worth the price for premium version.
even more you can import google addons into firefox ( right now only in nightly builds but it works )
Firefox
All day every day
Firefox! This is the way!
I generally install chrome to people who have no idea what they are doing. But since you are tech-savy enough to be in the fediverse, I’d recommend firefox without a second thought.
I generally install chrome to people who have no idea what they are doing.
Why? It’s not like Firefox is more complicated for the end user than Chrome.
True. However, when something goes wrong with an ignorant person’s machine, they are quick to blame it on the “unconventional” choice someone else made.
Fair. I might do the same now, because that is such a good point.
Good point. No one knows what a Mozilla is, but if you say it’s Google’s problem everyone shuts up.
That’s very true.
Do not use any Chromium based browser. Full stop.
- If you are on Mac, I recommend Orion (Webkit based, but Mac only ATM).
- For every other platform, including Linux, Firefox.
Honestly, Google has gotten so aggressively evil I’d strongly recommend cutting yourself off from all their products entirely. Consider Kagi instead of Google search and Proton instead of GMail. Other offerings also have alternatives that won’t spy on you, steal your information, or treat you like both a criminal and a product instead of a customer.
At first i was hesitant with kagi, like: Why would i pay for a search engine? Then i realized, on the others i am the product anyway, so privacy vs little bit of money. So i am a kagi user now! At the same time, kagi will keep getting better and better (just checked their blogs how much they upgraded in a year.)
TL;DR: Anone who sees this, give kagi search a try!
Same boat! I did their free trial, was genuinely impressed with their search results, and now I have a family subscription. I can control what my kids see too, which is a plus.
Orion is available on iOS and iPadOS as well, and I second Kagi search
I recommend Brave search, it’s an independent index so you get different results. Then you can add !g to search Google and get something else, you get more coverage
It also has an AI summary that’s often good enough to give you answers without clicking links, which I like
If you want to have choice in the future you should go with Firefox. Google is close to (or maybe already did) make Chrome equivalent of the Internet Explorer.
The better thing to what was with IE is that majority of websites still work fine in Firefox and people who stick to Chrome just do due to mostly ignorance.
I went to Firefox as soon as manifest v3 got announced, rather do it sooner rather than later.
Firefox if you take the time to harden it. You can also use librewolf which is hardened OOTB.
I only find Chromium useful for very browser-intensive things like browser games
Can you explain what has to be hardened?
better privacy
You need to do a lot of stuff like disabling telemetry, installing addons like ublock origin as well as making a few tweaks in about:config just to name a few.
“need to”
Firefox is a much better choice than most other browsers
Firefox, but if you do need a chromium based browser try ungoogled chromium
Also, I forgot to mention this, but Google didn’t really support WEI yet. It’s all from two engineers’ private opinions, though it’s also strange that they haven’t made an official statement yet.
Sure, let’s test the waters and keep deniability. It’s called a weather balloon.
Even just the fact that Google could force something like WEI on to everyone should be a wake-up call though.
Unless you really like things like CSS Overview and Sleeping Tabs and the intuitive extension bar you should switch to Firefox. It has container tabs and is a lot more resource efficient.
Is it, though? They seem very comparable to me these days.
That, and I’m pretty sure one of the multiple extensions I use to make Youtube watchable has a memory leak, because I do end up having to restart it periodically.
And yeah, I do miss the automatic tab grouping feature, trying to replicate it is such a hassle on Firefox.
Crucially, though, I still main Firefox despite all that, so… I guess that’s my vote.
I’m pretty sure one of the multiple extensions I use to make Youtube watchable has a memory leak, because I do end up having to restart it periodically.
It’s an extension, so has nothing really to do with the browser. That’s on par with one star reviews on Amazon because the package was delivered damaged.
I’ve never encountered such issues and when they do happen they’re very random and not “periodically”. I have no idea what you mean by “automatic tab grouping” but that did remind of two more features I miss from chromium which I’ve added.
To me my CPU usage has definintly gone down after switching to waterfox. Edge kept crashing periodically for me.
BTW, do you use any other extensions besides Enhancer, Annotations Restored, SponsorBlock and DeArrow?Enhancer and a downvote revealer. To @gigglybobble 's point below, I would argue Enhancer is part of Firefox at this point.
And while I do understand that’s not your experience, I assure you the issues do occur, and the overall weight and performance of Chrome and default Firefox is about the same. I still prefer Firefox, but I’m not gonna lie about the issues I’ve found for the sake of promoting it, either.
I would not say Enhancer is a part of firefox; the same extension also exists for chrome. However an early 2021 guide did say Firefox wasn’t less resource consuming, thanks for that.
Yeah I also have Return Youtube Dislike, forgot to mention that.
I use Firefox on high privacy settings but that breaks some sites so, when necessary, I use Iron. Iron is a less spy-y version of Chrome which has all the same apps (and a handful of its own).
If Iron is built on Chromium, which its website says that it is, it will be affected by Google’s upcoming changes.
I go for firefox. If a particular site is broken in there I open edge just for that task and I’m done with it
