How to Firefox
328 comments
·July 22, 2025mattlutze
giancarlostoro
I'm about the same, I don't even know what the loading speeds issue is about, I still remember Firefox Quantum beating the daylights out of Chrome, and I don't know if Chrome ever fully caught up to Quantum?
What's really funny is for ages Chrome would load the browser window even if the whole browser UI wasn't done loading, and sometime after Quantum, Firefox started doing the same trick to make you feel as though it instantly runs.
I've been using Firefox for about 20 years or so, and I don't regret it, but also I have not noticed a degrade in performance. I'm using it on Linux so I don't know if that's drastically different on a Mac these days.
carlhjerpe
I don't have anything but anecdotal experience here, but I think Google Chrome was gaming Windows Defender better for awhile, when Windows Defender treats you poorly IO grinds to a halt and then some.
I've never had Firefox issues on Linux.
nextos
> I've never had Firefox issues on Linux.
My experience on Linux running on very old hardware (4th Gen Intel) is also good. Firefox feels quick and snappy. It uses a reasonable amount of resources, and has a relatively modest memory footprint by modern browser standards. In comparison, Chromium makes my fans spin on every site and eats several GB of memory.
The annoying part of Firefox is that development seems a bit stagnant in some areas, especially taking into consideration the amount of resources Mozilla has. For example, bookmarks and history still rely on a very old native UI that is quite clunky. Customization via user.js is too imperative and most options are largely undocumented.
porphyra
I've had various Firefox issues on Linux such as mysterious bad frame rate that I wasn't able to track down (despite toggling every feature related to gpu acceleration in about:flags), slow startup (which I found was due to some dbus configuration), and inability to print (apparmor blocked cups).
voxic11
Do you use Firefox for Android? I use it for the extension support but its noticeably slower than Chrome on Android.
VHRanger
With ublock origin enabled on an android device I'd argue it's rather much faster
giancarlostoro
I'm on iOS, I guess I mainly use Firefox on Desktop, on iOS there's no point in me using Firefox since its forced to use Webkit under the covers.
moffkalast
What I've found recently is that Linux is surprisingly Firefox's achilles' heel. Canvas and WebGL run easily an order of magnitude slower than Chromium.
Check with https://webglsamples.org if you don't believe it. All of it runs capped at 60 fps on Chrome for me, Firefox struggles to break 30 on mid tier settings in aquarium and stutters horribly throughout most of them. I'm sure it's fast at loading static sites, but I wouldn't ever use it to run any web app. On Windows they're both the same though, which is weird to me.
eloisant
I've been using Firefox since it was called Firebird, and Linux has always been a 2nd zone citizen.
Most Mozilla developers are on Mac, most users are on Windows, so Linux have never been the focus.
mook
I note that the GitHub org has two public members, one of which is from Google: https://github.com/orgs/WebGLSamples/people
Google's been doing advocacy where they do things that either only work on Chrome or just magically works faster there, for a very long time.
doph
I didn't believe it and after trying those samples, I still don't. All of them run flawlessly for me on FF 104.0.4 on an up-to-date Arch install on my laptop.
funcDropShadow
I've tried perhaps one third of the samples. All of them ran in 120 fps in 3840x2160 px in Firefox on Linux on my machine. Perhaps it is a configuration problem. My screen has a 120 fps refresh rate, so it probably is capped there.
h3lp
thanks for the benchmark tip. FWIW, firefox 140.0.4 on Fedora 42 runs pretty much all tests at 60 fps or therebouts.
stuaxo
The recently work with DMABUF on Linux might help a lot of things get faster.
giancarlostoro
I'll test it when I get home, I'm really curious, I've not noticed a slowdown, I am using Arch so I'm not sure if that makes a meaningful difference.
exiguus
My take is that Firefox is not very effective at marketing. For example, Chrome publishes articles like 'Chrome achieves highest score ever on Speedometer' (2024) [1]. I haven't found similar articles or any reliable scores for Firefox. Some computer magazines suggest that Firefox is in second place after Chrome in running Speedometer 3. For me, at least, it's hard to find any specific numbers. Also, it's important to note that Speedometer is a browser benchmark test developed by WebKit, Firefox, and Chrome.
Also, i don't understand why people prefer google over open source. And the sometimes disrespectful and destructive criticism of Mozilla.
[1] https://blog.chromium.org/2025/06/chrome-achieves-highest-sc...
Sayrus
Mozilla does sometimes. For instance 'Quick as a Fox: Firefox keeps getting faster'[2] from 2023 and the related articles in Mozilla Hacks[2]. They used to do that a lot more when Quantum was all the hype and had some marketing performance comparison[3] with Chrome a long time back. Recently, it feels like Mozilla is dropping that type of marketing to focus on the image of privacy and talk about some features.
[1] https://blog.mozilla.org/en/uncategorized/quick-as-a-fox-fir...
[2] https://hacks.mozilla.org/2023/10/down-and-to-the-right-fire...
[3] https://blog.mozilla.org/en/firefox/firefox-private-browsing...
helij
In two decades of using it (yep) I never had an issue. I used it on Linux, MacOS and Windows and I don't remember any issues whatsoever.
behringer
Same here, although I've had a couple issues but I actually contacted the website operator and over time they fixed the issues (either that or firefox themselves fixed it). It never hurts to reach out to tech support and ask for firefox support!
WhyNotHugo
> 100+ tabs open across multiple desktops. My wimply little MacBook Pro doesn't seem to mind.
There's a bug on Linux where background windows continue rendering, even if they're in an inactive workspace or not visible in any other way. This really hits performance, but it doesn't seem to be fixable due to some limitation on GTK3.
If I hide/resize my system status-bar, every single window gets resized to match the new available screen space. Firefox re-renders all content in all windows, causing multiple CPUs to spike to 100%.
See: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1880467
In fact, there are a lot of bugs which are basically "unfixable due to limitations in GTK3". So the experience is likely quite different that on other platforms.
Regrettably, there don't seem to by any plans to move away from GTK in future.
lucumo
> there's occasionally sites that have bugs because [...people build for Chrome...]
I hear that a lot, but when I tried Firefox for a couple of months I only found that in a single case[1]. It's really not something that happened to me at all. I did encounter issues with ad blockers breaking sites. Disabling uBO helps quite often on misbehaving sites, but it does so on Chrome as well.
> I am surprised how many people have so many problems with Firefox.
I'm not really. Nor am I surprised it works for you and others. It has been this way with Firefox for all of its 20+ years of existence. In its history it made one big leap in that, somewhat ironically given current affairs, when they removed XUL extensions.
But Firefox has always had weird, unexplainable and unreproducible failure scenarios. Some of that is because of its customizability, but also nobody really cares about it.[2] The standard advice of "throw away your profile and try again" is a huge fuck you to users. 1) People have spend time customizing their browser and throwing that away hurts. 2) It doesn't help anybody. If it's still broken you know nothing, and if it isn't you still don't know what caused it.
I guess that was okay in 2004. Lots of software had weird bugs. Nowadays the competition is much more stable.
For me, I dropped Firefox again after a couple of months fighting to get a stable sync working.[3] It just kept failing on Android. The only resolution was to log out and log back in again. Only for it to break in the next couple of hours. I did the "commit profile suicide and rebirth" thing without a solution.
Chrome's sync at least is very stable. Sometimes it falls an hour or so behind. Not good, but so much better than Firefox.
[1] And that was intentional. Typical Google assholery. Google Photos added (adds?) extra HTML to block right-click on photos when a Firefox User-Agent was used. Using a UA switcher extension "solved" it.
[2] Makers of software for power users so often forget to give power users the tools to investigate issues themselves. It's great you allow me to add so many extensions, how about a detailed log to see which is misbehaving?
[3] Firefox's sync also has fewer features. Bookmarks don't get synced, nor do extension settings.
lucumo
> Bookmarks don't get synced,
*Search engines. Bookmark sync works fine.
bashkiddie
I am a heavy user of firefox and I am still unhappy with mozillas policy.
* Firefox-Hello is a easy to pick example of a broken service run by a 3rd party being imposed on users.
* Pocket is another service I never asked for.
* Instead of focusing on the browser, mozilla puts their effort into an English language database.
It appears to me mozilla does not understand their target audience.
Recently I tried to customize firefox for screen recording and ran into lots of outdated documentation about userChrome.css
exiguus
What is the reason for criticizing Mozilla for integrating a new feature into their browser? Or am I misunderstanding the term feature, and Pocket isn't a feature for you? I mean, other browsers like Chrome have similar functionality.
WorldMaker
Pocket is shutting down soon and fresh Firefox installs don't install its extension any more.
deepsun
Which kinda makes sense. It was actually cool when it could save webpages for later reading offline (camping, airplane). Once it lost that feature, there's nothing left but bookmarks.
thinkingtoilet
>I've never felt impeded by loading speeds
I honestly think it's just something people here like to complain about. It's a complete non-issue. No everyday web experience is even close to being noticeably different. Full stop. It's almost like a meme, people say it because they think they should say it. I would ask those people that are complaining, what are you doing with all those extra milliseconds you claim you're saving?
TedDoesntTalk
> what are you doing with all those extra milliseconds you claim you're saving?
Watching more ads.
rs186
When you have web pages that that completely freeze the Firefox browser but work smoothly on Chrome, you won't call it non-issue.
carlhjerpe
I don't know why I should lower my browsing standards to a Chrome experience because a small percentage of websites work poorly in Firefox. My password manager works in all browsers so I have Chrome with only PW manager and uBlock Lite so I can use it for the ONE website I use that doesn't work in FF.
I don't think it's frustrating to press Ctrl+L, Ctrl+C, $launcher-bind(Meta+D), Ctrl+L, Ctrl+V, Enter to open another browser.
My average experience is a lot better with Firefox and that's what I optimize for.
hunter-gatherer
I have been on Firefox for some years now on Mac, Linux, Windows, and Android. Last year the IRS website had some issues, but that seems to be resolved. Otherwise, I've had zero breakages that cone to mind. I use ublock origin, and pivacy badger, and a few other extensions. I wonder if sometimes the issues people experience with firefox are actually caused from their extensions???
If you haven't used Firefox in a minute, I recommend trying it oht again.
disgruntledphd2
This doesn't seem to happen to me anymore, certainly not since Quantum. Your experience may obviously differ. I've been running FF for like twenty years now, across Windows, Linux and Mac.
thinkingtoilet
Name one.
the__alchemist
I can't answer your question directly, as I haven't experienced Firefox problems in a few years. In the past, I experienced regular hangs and crashes.
There are a few point to unpacck here:
- Qualifying a statement with "Full stop" is a thought-terminating cliche.
- Due to the different hardware, operating systems, and use cases people have, peoples' experience, and the problems they encounter vary between users of PC software.
- Milliseconds as overhead to startup may be irrelevant. Ms in most computing contexts is a timescale to be concerned with, as it's relevant for latency, cumulative operations, and responsiveness.IAmBroom
This isn't "most computing contexts", so that point is irrelevant. You've already admitted the point "may be" irrelevant (it is), so why bring it up.
thinkingtoilet
I've used Firefox with on Windows, iOS, and various linux distributions with absolutely no day to day issues.
wing-_-nuts
> - Qualifying a statement with "Full stop" is a thought-terminating cliche.
Yeah, well I like it. Full stop.
vladvasiliu
I was in your boat up until a few days ago, when it randomly decided in wouldn't load properly. I force quit it, and then it forgot all my tabs. Now, it actually remembered what seemed like the correct number of tabs, each with the correct container, only the address was gone from every tab!
Other than that, it works well enough for me. My only beef is I can't completely disable tabs, but I don't know of any equivalent browser that can.
eclecticfrank
Lots of Firefox hate here, but little discussion about the articles kicker, which is the exclusion of uBlock Origin from Chrome.
I hope this will mean that in the long run Firefox (and other secondary browsers) will gain more users again. For me, Firefox is a solid piece of software. Works well in strict privacy mode, with uBlock Origin and Multi-Account Containers.
Twirrim
Multi-Account Containers is a major feature I can't sing the praises for enough. I use it all the time, both to isolate stuff to break cookie tracking, and to enable me to log into things with two different accounts without opening a separate browser, which happens more often than I'd have thought.
pavel_lishin
There's a few pain points with containers; whenever I'm browsing in a container tab, I wish CMD-T opened a new container tab, not my default tab. I haven't been able to find a setting for this :/
I also wish there were more keyboard shortcuts for opening links in specific containers, or re-opening a current tab in a different one.
I know you can set certain domains to always open in certain containers - fine for Facebook, when I occasionally have to use it - but annoying when I'm trying to do things in different (e.g.) Bluesky accounts.
sorcercode
> I also wish there were more keyboard shortcuts for opening links in specific containers, or re-opening a current tab in a different one.
fwiw, there are add-ons that allow you to do this - in one way or the other (Container Hotkeys https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/container-hot... for example).
but out of curiosity,
> I know you can set certain domains to always open in certain containers - fine for Facebook, when I occasionally have to use it - but annoying when I'm trying to do things in different (e.g.) Bluesky accounts.
on this one btw, the Containerise extension i talk about (if it wasn't clear) allows you to also map "portions" of the url in specific containers. so /u/0 in one /u/1 in another; ofc, this requires the service/website to distinguish the accounts via the url. i do this for github a lot (work repos in specific containers)
ReadCarlBarks
> both to isolate stuff to break cookie tracking
You don't need containers for this: https://total-cookie-protection-test.netlify.app/
carlhjerpe
When I was doing IT support for ~50 SMBs I was using multi account containers + temporary locations ALL THE TIME to log into customer accounts in various places, now I don't really have the usecase but the addons are still there for the rare occasion.
WhyNotHugo
> Lots of Firefox hate here, but little discussion about the articles kicker, which is the exclusion of uBlock Origin from Chrome.
I'll complain about Firefox a lot, because I'm exposed to all its issues. That doesn't mean I hate it: I see issues in all products that I use, even the ones that are really useful or essential. I'm sure I'm not unique in this aspect in the HN crowd.
hbn
On my list of concerns for big tech abusing power, the ad company with the browser monopoly leveraging their position to essentially end ad blocking on the web by disabling it on the browser people are using in practice is very high on the list, and I would have been fine waiting on forcing Apple to let you uninstall the camera app, or switching the iPhone to USB-C if it could have prevented this. This didn't come out of nowhere, we've known about manifest v3 for years now.
In fact Google's browser monopoly only looks like it's gonna get further cemented as Apple is forced to allow other browser engines, which is the only thing keeping any sort of competition against Chrome.
I feel like the anti-Apple snark that's been so popular since around the late 2000s (and I took part in in my angsty teen years) has been affecting the priority of what's being dealt with from regulators and it annoys me.
bool3max
In the long run Alphabet will find a way to bar non-vetted browsers from accessing the Internet.
IHLayman
Alphabet will definitely try to do that (within their business interest and all that), but I still choose to believe in the precept that “the net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it”, as old and outdated as that sounds.
A number of my privacy-minded friends choose a bi-modal approach: have two phones, one for work and one for personal. They don’t get the recent model (costing half as much), hold onto the old phone for as long as they can, use one phone for “required” apps (Okta, Slack, those websites that only work on Chrome…) and the personal phone for everything else.
As annoying as it is, i think that compartmentalized devices/accounts/apps are the only way forward.
GeoAtreides
The future is now (actually 2 years ago): https://github.com/explainers-by-googlers/Web-Environment-In...
kaszanka
Probably even non-vetted firmware-to-browser chains, by requiring boot attestation to open a TLS connection or something.
normalaccess
I'm dreading the day when this becomes required by the government...
prasadjoglekar
Hopefully in the slightly shorter run, they get broken up via anti trust.
seanclayton
Some of us want a different world and believe it's possible.
pivo
Perhaps, but I'm not giving up just yet.
psionides
How would they do that?
null
FigurativeVoid
I had no idea how many ads load the average page. I just forgot because I have been using uBlock for so long.
I have been hesitant to use Firefox, just because I am used to chrome. But after Google forcibly disabled software that I chose to run, I'm all in on Firefox.
crabmusket
Whenever I use my partner's iPhone, or even open links on Chrome on my phone (I usually use Firefox with adblock) I feel like I'm being slapped in the face by ads. The difference is shocking.
hk1337
Even using pihole you see this. I remember a post on reddit, just about every comment was complaining about the ads and how it made it unreadable but it looked just fine to me.
WXLCKNO
I pulled the trigger on a full Firefox migration a few months ago because of ublock.
Google Chrome had browser change inertia going for it, nothing else.
sshine
In a way, an ad company disabling adblock on their browser makes perfect sense.
I'm happy they came around and showed the world what they're made of: ads.
For anyone who doesn't like ads jammed down their throat and their personal privacy blatantly sold off:
Google and Microsoft should be banned for obvious reasons.
nuker
- June 2024. Mozilla acquires Anonym, an ad metrics firm.
- July 2024. Mozilla adds Privacy-Preserving Attribution (PPA), feature is enabled by default. Developed in cooperation with Meta (Facebook).
- Feb 2025. Mozilla updates its Privacy FAQ and TOS. "does not sell data about you." becomes "... in the way that most people think about it".
sorcercode
Mozilla has had missteps for sure (like almost every other browser company). but the MVP is uBO (which Firefox still allows). Even if Firefox adds that in by default (which suck), uBO allows you to block outgoing traffic to these 3rd party sites.
prophesi
A tip I would add to this article is that Firefox natively supports sidebar tabs now without needing hacky extensions. Go to about:preferences under the Browser Layout section of the General tab, and select Vertical Tabs. The tab group functionality along with Multi-Account Containers are a lot more useful under this layout IMO.
kozinc
Tab Groups combined with Vertical tabs makes for a pretty awesome experience
FeepingCreature
Still no multi-row tab bars or API support for hiding the main tab bar, as was explicitly promised when they killed TabMixPlus.
ReadCarlBarks
Power users interested in this niche feature can use a script: https://old.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/1m594nv/multi_tab_...
sulandor
> Firefox natively supports sidebar tabs now without needing hacky extensions
glad you mentioned it!
edge and opera do too
sorcercode
appreciate it. funnily enough I thought I implied it with the Arc mention. but rereading it, you're right, that fact doesn't come through at all.
will make an edit
1vuio0pswjnm7
Having tested uMatrix and uBlock Origin for years, and having tried many other Firefox extensions, IMO the best Firefox advantage is neither of those nor any other extension. It is a rarely discussed about:config option called
network.dns.forceResolve
Chrome desktop also has something like this, but it's a command-line option. Firefox OTOH allows one to select a global domain-to-IP mapping while the browser is running.
uMatrix and uBlock are IMHO designed for graphical browsers and the graphical www. For me, graphics are secondary, not a priority. I can get better (easier) control over HTTP requests and real-time transparency into TLS traffic through a forward proxy.
Firefox is still massive overkill for me. Ridiculously large and complicated. No doubt there are people who are comfortable and pleased with this sort of complexity. Glad they like it, but I am not one of those people.
Unlike Chromium or Firefox the relatively small and simple software I use to extract information from the web can be compiled in seconds on inexpensive hardware. The speeds of "no-browser" (HTTP generator plus TCP client) or the text-only browser I use easily beat any graphical, Javascript-running browser. Better control over HTTP headers, cookies and real-time, configurable logging. Not only that but I can process large, catenated HTML files that make the complex, popular browsers stall and choke.
hundchenkatze
I'd love to hear more about your setup, and how you access the web.
thoroughburro
> Here’s something the iPhone isn’t getting anytime soon: honest-to-god browser extensions that you use on your desktop, also on your phone.
This convinces me the author is not knowledgeable about current browser capabilities. They probably haven’t tried anything but Firefox in a long time.
Orion runs desktop (Firefox) extensions on iOS, and is in many ways a breath of fresh air. Instead of parroting “all iOS browsers are Safari” and throwing their hands in the air, they actually got hacking on it.
Edit:
> With adopting the Web Extensions API, we show our support for creating a unified browser extensions experience across all three major web rendering engines. We ended up porting hundreds of APIs, one by one, that were never meant to work with WebKit. Took us a few years, but here we are!
> Orion currently supports about 70% of Web Extensions APIs, and we add more every day. On top of that, we built advanced security features that give our users granular control over extensions, beyond what Chrome and Firefox offer. For example, you can choose to allow an extension to run only on certain websites.
elashri
While orion is good option, it is not there yet in terms of comparison with Firefox on Android. Many of the extensions will install but will not actually work. Even uBlock origin will have problems. Also it is common that an update will make the browser crash very often (happened with few updates). Also they don't provide a list of APIs they support and it is not open source (although they said they will but at this point I don't think they will any time soon).
thoroughburro
But you agree the quote I responded to was incorrect, right?
cwillu
You agree that your statement that it runs firefox extensions is misleading, right?
If I said “linux runs windows software and games” without further remarks, people would be correct to call me out on it.
elashri
Orion is based on WebKit, that's usually what people mean when they say it is all safari. So it is technically correct but orion approach ia to try to implement web extensions API in WebKit. Otherwise, apple wouldn't have allowed orion on App Store because the requirement is not to use any other engines (holding off to see what EU DMA effect would have).
dleeftink
Not op, but you cannot fault the author for not knowing every app or trend. With any luck, your reply will inform the original author, who may learn a thing or two from the discussion we are having here!
jeroenhd
I tried Orion after reading this, but other than uBlock Origin I haven't had much luck with getting extensions to work. I guess the extensions I use don't really overlap with the 70% they do support. If they've been working hard on this for years, I have to wonder what will happen first, actual mobile extension support on iOS through Kagi or a Firefox release for iOS.
The entire Orion browser feels like a beta product to me. But at least I've got uBlock on my work phone now, so that's cool I guess.
freeAgent
It is literally in beta, so it feeling like a beta product isn’t surprising. It does work with the extensions I need and it’s my primary browser on iOS, but I still find it too buggy and crash-prone on the desktop. That seems to be improving, but it’s not convinced me that it’s reliable enough yet.
lol768
> parroting “all iOS browsers are Safari”
But they are? It's a rendering engine monoculture. Sure, they might have different skins and some stuff bolted on top, but let's not pretend that that constitutes a different browser (and this is precisely why Apple got bitch-slapped by the European Union).
cosmic_cheese
It’s still something of an exaggeration. If you take a look at the source for iOS browsers, the amount of unique code is non-trivial.
At minimum, it’s a sliding scale rather than binary and iOS browsers are less Safari reskins than Chromium-based browsers (most of which share a much higher percentage of code) are Chrome reskins. There’s exceptions like Arc which uses a bespoke AppKit/SwiftUI/WinUI UI instead of the standard Chromium stuff but that’s pretty rare.
fsflover
> the amount of unique code is non-trivial
This doesn't matter as long as essential features of Firefox aren't allowed by Apple.
thesuitonym
The author is very clearly an Android user, so I'll give them some leeway on this. It's not like it's the crux of their opinion, it's just one extra layer. Also, until Orion is available on Windows and Linux, it's a no-go for a lot of people.
navigate8310
The author definitely is not being very knowledgeable. In the comments, they didn't try Zen because they assumed, it can't sync bookmarks and extensions, which in fact it can and has Mozilla account baked into it.
sorcercode
yep that's something I learned later.
fwiw though: Zen does have other challenges at the moment with the Widevine licence. so you effectively can't use it to watch most video services today.
But point taken, from a technical accuracy perspective.
inopinatus
by family tree, almost all current browsers are descendants of '90s-era Konqueror.
abyssin
Thank you so much for this comment that made me learn about Orion on iOS. It seems to be filling a gap that had been open for years.
perlgeek
One of my main reasons for staying with Firefox is that in the long term, I think it's good to have a diversity in browser engines.
Back when I started web development, there were standards, but nearly everybody just coded to what Internet Explorer supported. Which I really hated :-)
In the past few years, I've seen the occasional "works best with Chrome" website, which worries me, but so far it hasn't been too bad.
But if we as a community leave the browser market to Chrome and browsers with engines of similar origin as Chrome's, we'll get back to the bad old days.
sebstefan
> In the past few years, I've seen the occasional "works best with Chrome" website, which worries me, but so far it hasn't been too bad.
Microphone & webcam support, screensharing and stuff like that almost always shit the bed for me. Slack, teams, they don't care to check if their shit works on firefox.
ahmetcadirci25
This is something that has been on my mind for years — I want to use Firefox, but for some strange reason, it just doesn’t feel as smooth as Chrome.
Here are the features of Firefox that I find particularly appealing:
- The Firefox Multi-Account Containers feature, in my opinion, is what puts this browser at the top.
- Additionally, the privacy extensions work incredibly well.
However, there are some drawbacks:
- Strangely, it doesn’t feel smooth — regardless of whether I'm on Windows or macOS.
- I experience video codec issues, which I hope I’m not the only one facing.
- I can't run the extensions I develop in dev mode. I haven’t been able to find a solution for this. That said, I don't encounter this issue in LibreWolf.
I don’t use Chrome; instead, I prefer Ungoogled-Chromium, as Google is not a trustworthy company in my view — both due to its policies and many other problematic actions.
I’m truly grateful to the developers of Ungoogled-Chromium for removing Google services and for keeping the browser consistently updated.
I’ve tried all sorts of browsers like Vivaldi, Brave, and Orion, but none of them feel smooth or stable to me — at least, that’s how I perceive it.
I hope you might have some better suggestions.
0xpgm
> The Firefox Multi-Account Containers feature, in my opinion, is what puts this browser at the top.
For a long time this was the reason I didn't move to Brave, but eventually I realized I don't need it so much because Brave already sandboxes cookies for each site so some social media or ad network won't be able to track me across different sites.
The remaining use for multi-account containers now is staying logged in with different accounts to the same site, which for my usecase I can do with Brave profiles.
Now Brave is my major browser and once in a while I'll bring up Librefox. Firefox lost me when they went all in with their strategy to feed user data into AI presumably for ad purposes.
ahmetcadirci25
I don't care about cookies at all — what matters to me is being able to log into multiple, separate accounts. Creating browser profiles feels like starting everything from scratch: settings, extensions, and more. It's just not practical.
With Firefox, you set your preferences and extensions once, and from then on, tab-based profiles work flawlessly.
I wish Chrome had a similar feature — a container system at the tab level.
EbNar
> it just doesn’t feel as smooth as Chrome
Because it isn't.
https://arewefastyet.com/win11/benchmarks/overview?numDays=6...
cptskippy
> I want to use Firefox, but for some strange reason, it just doesn’t feel as smooth as Chrome.
I think I know what you mean. I'm a Firefox user who occasionally uses Chrome, and I generally don't like the way Chromium feels. I feel similar differences between MacOS, Windows, and Gnome.
Both browsers have different performance characteristics, sites like Substack are much slower on Firefox than on Chrome. Other sites feel like wading through molasses on Chrome. It varies but it's 100% noticeable.
sebstefan
> - I can't run the extensions I develop in dev mode. I haven’t been able to find a solution for this. That said, I don't encounter this issue in LibreWolf.
I don't have this problem. I was gonna type a long winded thing to descrbe how I do it but since you managed to make it work in LibreWolf it's likely not an issue with how you're doing it
>- I experience video codec issues, which I hope I’m not the only one facing.
I haven't had that either
My bane is trying to make microphones/cameras work in video calls on teams/slack/etc. When you open up the console they use chrome-only javascript all over. They give no shit supporting firefox.
ahmetcadirci25
- In Librewolf, when I set the `xpinstall.signatures.required` preference to `false` in the `about:config` section, I'm able to install my `.xpi` extension. However, this setting doesn't work in Firefox.
- The other issue was related to codecs. On Windows, I encountered an error message saying: "No video with supported format and MIME type found."
The issue was resolved after installing the following codecs on Windows:
sebstefan
>- The other issue was related to codecs. On Windows, I encountered an error message saying: "No video with supported format and MIME type found."
I did get that for a few days!
But then it went away. By itself.
FrankyHollywood
'Reader view'! I use it on a daily basis.
Don't know if this is standard for any browser now, FF is my main browser since I left Opera...
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/firefox-reader-view-clu...
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mortsnort
Chrome has it, but it's hidden in menus. Android has it as an OS feature with a really unintuitive interface. It also fails the first time you try to read any page, but works the second time... It's clearly not something they want you to use.
cpeterso
True. Firefox's reader view is a one-click button in the address bar, whereas Chrome's is buried in the application menu > More tools > Reading mode. And even then, Chrome only shows the reader view in a narrow sidebar, leaving the messy page open.
rc_kas
This is indeed my favorite FireFox feature. Sometimes it even helps get past article paywalls to read the article.
sixhobbits
This is pretty similar to my set up but I'm ready to quit Firefox because what feels like every few weeks they somehow manage to add new auto-enabled spyware.
I regularly have to turn stuff off in
"Firefox Data Collection and Use"
and
"Website Advertising Preferences"
Recently I also started seeing ads in my address bar when typing stuff and saw they've added:
"Suggestions from sponsors Support Firefox with occasional sponsored suggestions."
of course, enabled by default.
Firefox is a great product but unfortunately slowly being milked/destroyed by its non-technical management team.
ReadCarlBarks
Updates aren't supposed to reset any setting. Submit a bug report for them to fix whatever is doing that for you: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/
djrj477dhsnv
Easiest solution is to just use LibreWolf on desktop and IronFox on Android.
They get rid of all the anti-privacy defaults.
fsflover
> but I'm ready to quit Firefox because
This is still nowhere near Google's browser.
b0dhimind
Surprised Sidebery isn't mentioned even more. It's the main reason I switched, being the tab hoarding organizer I am, though I love all the other features he mentioned.
I am surprised how many people have so many problems with Firefox.
I've never felt impeded by loading speeds, and my ADHD regularly has me forgetting to restart it, to the tune of 100+ tabs open across multiple desktops. My wimply little MacBook Pro doesn't seem to mind.
The only downside I've found is that, because so many people just default to "Chrome or nothing," there's occasionally sites that have bugs because, like was the case in the 90s with Internet Explorer, the site developers took the idiomatic Chrome way of building a feature instead of something universal.