a blog post about why i switched from librewolf to zen browser as someone who is a privacy enthusiast, what im loving about zen browser, why i now think librewolf is mediocre at best, and why i think you should make the switch too.
what is zen browser?
In case you are unaware, Zen is a somewhat new, Firefox based, privacy focused web browser. Despite it being relatively new, many people are switching
to it, adopting it and loving it. It also is designed to aid you in being productive, and features some very pretty visuals. Aswell as this, it has some
more features to it which I really like, which we'll cover later.
If you know what Librewolf is, then you will know that Zen and Librewolf share alot in common, including:
- Having Firefox as a base
- Being privacy focused
- Being open source (obviously)
what is librewolf?
Librewolf is a privacy and security focused "fork" of Firefox. Calling it a fork of Firefox is a stretch, as it essentially just Firefox with some privacy settings applied by default, the ArkenFox user JS and a rebrand (pretty much every custom hardening setting can be easily achieved in vanilla firefox) . Like said earlier, it shares many similarities with Zen. This was my primary browser on Windows and Linux until recently.
why i love zen
Zen is great for a number of reasons. Its got a very nice design, its privacy rivals other privacy focused browsers such as Librewolf,
its extremely configurable, and makes use of many Firefox features that other Firefox based browsers either completely ignore or make no good use of. A
great example of this is workspaces (or containers), which I had no idea it was a
feature in Firefox since I haven't seen it be used in other Firefox based browsers, despite of how good a feature it is for both privacy and
productivity or organization. Zen makes excellent use of this feature instead of ignoring it. Another insanely useful Zen feature is essentials.
Its essentially bookmarks, but for websites you use often. This may not seem that useful, but for me it's amazing. Basically, whenever I find a
source or something remotely useful or cool to me I will bookmark it. This leads to my bookmarks being pretty cluttered, and would mean using bookmarks
as a quick way to open something like Tuta mail would just not work, which is where essential tabs come in. The feature essentially allows me to seperate
my important stuff into two categories: source or something I want to remember, and apps or websites I use often.
Of course, there are many, many more useful features in Zen, like overhauling many UI elements of Firefox to make them look just that little bit
nicer. This is why I recommend you, or anyone, use Zen as their main browser.
why i think librewolf is mediocre
I used Librewolf for about a year, and so I feel like I can give a pretty accurate view on what makes it a pretty good choice but also reasons
to not use it. Like said before, Librewolf is just hardened Firefox under a different name. It was my main choice because it worked, was easier
to setup than Firefox, since setting up vanilla Firefox nowadays requires a huge amount of debloating and configuring, when Librewolf does most
of this for you. However, now looking back on it, Librewolf is literally Firefox but a bit better, with some privacy features that are built in
and are bad. For example, Resist Fingerprinting. In Librewolf's settings, enabling Resist Fingerprinting will force you to use
light mode across sites for whatever reason, and you have to disable it to have dark mode. This wouldn't be that bad if resisting fingerprinting
required you to not use dark mode on sites, but it actually doesn't. You can get basically the same fingerprinting
resistance in Librewolf through Canvas Blocker, an extension that, belive it or not, allows you to use dark mode. This is just one
of the many examples of Librewolf being annoying.
Plus, if you wanted the most secure browser, you would use a Chromium based browser like Trivalent, which are actually secure.
This leaves Librewolf in a position where it's privacy features which make it good are annoying and do it worse than an extension, but
focuses on nothing else, which means it's just mediocre. The only use case for Librewolf nowadays is to get more compatability
than Trivalent, or if you NEED a Firefox based browser.
conclusion
So, the conclusion? Use Zen. All the hardening in Librewolf can be done in Zen, and sometimes even better than how Librewolf does it. If you care a lot about security in your browser especially, use a Chromium based browser.