I can’t speak to Brave, but a lot of us have been burned by Firefox before.
And the minority that still uses FF is constantly reminded that Brave is a flaming dumpsterfire that pretends to be not on fire. Sure, FF occasionally did questionable things. Brave does them all the time.
Don’t look at me, I’ve been an Opera fan for more years than I care to admit.
Opera, like Edge and Brave is just Chrome in a trenchcoat
RIP Presto :( I wish they had open-sourced it when they abandoned it
Even after it’s been sold to a Chinese company?
I saw recent versions of Opera and it’s looks like dogshit, how do you use it guys? (and why?)
It’s a combination of having used it forever and it has all the features I want. Part might also be that subversive little me likes using something not everyone knows exist.
I mean there is a lot of other browsers which offer even more features (and also better privacy & interface). Also I don’t think that people don’t know what opera is, in my country it’s was (and maybe is) very popular
I want to use the same browser on desktop and mobile, but Firefox doesn’t support ad-blocking on iOS.
Maybe the problem is not Firefox here, but Apple.
Apple does not allow other browsers than Safari on iOS. All other browsers are just reskins of Safari.Apple does not allow other browsers than Safari on iOS. All other browsers are just reskins of Safari.
And yet only Brave blocks ads effortlessly…
Of course it is an Apple issue in the core, but unless Firefox includes a proper ad blocking frautre (no add-ons needed because that’s unlikely to happen in iOS) is also a Firefox issue, and I I’d say the main reason why it loses market when competing against Brave in such a closed environment.
Imo builtin AdBlockers is much worse than addons. You have no free choice, have to trust that the devs will provide updates regularly and accurately (in contrast to just switching to another AdBlocker when eg. uBlock breaks), and are fucked once they decide it’s too much work/Google pays them a nice sum to not block them/they decide to just replace the ads instead of removing them.
Addons on iOS, just as on Android, are very much needed and an actual solution to a whole plethora of problems, that no browser on its own could ever solve.
Yes, I don’t think anyone thinks otherwise, but built in adblockers are better than DNS adblockers, which consecutively are better than nothing lol (also you could pair both I guess and get an improved experience).
The problem is absolutely Apple but a guy’s still gotta block his ads somehow
Extricating yourself from the Apple ecosystem can be tough for some people.
/yes, I use Android
Pihole.
That’s not a great suggestion for the stated use case of a mobile device which, presumably, will be leaving the pihole’s network frequently.
Tailscale, zerotier, or any other VPN server on your home network can keep your mobile device on your pihole network regardless of physical location.
This is not something the average person does, or is even technically capable of doing.
I’m going to reject that criticism in this particular case. PiHole is a significantly more complex setup than Tailscale or ZeroTier. While I agree that it is beyond expectations for the “average person”, so is PiHole.
An OpenVPN server on a dynamic IP address is not that far beyond the skillset of the average PiHole user, especially if they are using an open source router with OpenVPN and DDNS preinstalled.
Tailscale or ZeroTier are well within the capabilities of a PiHole user.
Also simply compatibility, some sites just don’t work (or dont work well) on Firefox or librewolf, thats one key reason I go back to brave for a lot of things.
I genuinely have not seen a site that doesn’t work on Firefox in years. Probably five or more. Can you think of an example off the top of your head?
Same here, I’ve been using it for years both on mobile and desktop, and I can’t remember the last time I’ve had to open chrome for a specific website
They won’t make it compatible if they don’t have Firefox users.
Agreed, but I also have work to do. On my personal PC at home I use librewolf, as for most casual browsing its fine.
But the question was why do people use brave over Firefox and my answer simply is cos it doesn’t have the functionality i need. I dunno about your boss but if I say to mine “I didn’t do my job cos my browser of choice doesn’t work” I don’t reckon I’ll stay employed for long.
Name and shame them. Send them a complaint.
Relatedly, does anyone know if there’s a public list of sites that don’t work (properly or at all) in Firefox somewhere? A quick (non-Google) web search doesn’t seem to turn one up. If I was working at Mozilla, that would be the kind of database I might be interested in making a public resource. And I don’t mean as part of the Bug Tracker, though links between the two for legitimate problems could be useful, I guess.
Something with a very basic interface that has an offending site name, how it doesn’t work, perhaps why, and what, if anything, Mozilla can do about it. In short simple sentences. One per offending site in 16pt text. And a search feature for when it runs to the hundreds.
It could be something like: [favicon/logo] example.com - Outright states that it will not support Firefox. Mozilla cannot do anything about this. Complain to Example Inc. [favicon/logo] example.net - interface is buggy in Firefox. Site misuses web standards in a way incompatible with Firefox’s renderer. We are looking into this. <Link to bug tracker here> [favicon/logo] example.org - interface does not load. Site uses non-standard Google-only CSS properties. We are looking into this, but you could also contact The Example Organisation to ask them to review their CSS. etc.
I’ve not had any problems with the handful of sites I use, at least not outside of something caused by browser security or add-ons which I eventually figured out how to fix.
That said, I’ve probably forgotten a handful I just straight up refused to visit again when they didn’t work and now they’re not in my regular rotation any more, so I don’t notice.
Conversely, no browser but Firefox supports ad blocking (and other) addons on Android.
Brave, Vivaldi, Samsung Internet all support ad-blocking on Android, as far as I remember.
But it is not addon support
There are no ads in my Firefox. Is it because of DNS?
Perhaps if you tell us which DNS you are using.
Pihole
Yes, Pi-hole helps, it is not as good as an inbuilt adblocker or a more capable one like Ublock Origin, but it is better than nothing :)
This doesn’t solve your same browser issue, but just fyi the browser “Orion” on iOS supports full browser extensions. Its developed by the company that runs the Kagi search engine
I thought all browsers on iOS were just wrappers for the same engine (webkit?), so they really can’t do much there.
Yes but multiple browsers managed to support ad-block on iOS, including Safari.
Firefox seems to be the ONLY browser without ad-block support on iOS.
Both Vivaldi and Brave have working adblockers on iOS while Firefox does not. This is not WebKit’s fault, shouldn’t be an issue for Firefox mobile developers to implement.
I use FF on android, but on my (ancient) desktop, it just runs like shit, while any of the chromium variants “just work”.
No idea it’s been plain to me is Brave is kind of dodgy to the point I’ve never even tried it.
Somewhere along the line Brave tricked people into thinking they weren’t owned by a couple of really bigoted dudes.
In fairness Brian Bondy might be a good dude, but Brendan Eich sucks.
Do you have a source that resumes everything bad about Brave in one neat package ? I am tired of searching for sources everywhere and not finding everything I need each time someone ask me about it
Firefox is my main browser but there’s a few specific things that only work in chromium.
People will use whatever works for them.Other than MS Teams, which is garbage by default, I have yet to find anything that’s not working in Firefox.
When I’ve used Teams for meetings from my home computers, I use the web version (as I don’t really want to instal the app.) I’ve never had an issue with it on Firefox; not even on devices running Linux.
I always use the browser versions as well since I want to avoid installing anything Microsoft that’s not absolutely necessary, and never got teams to work in Firefox. With user agent faker I can get it to connect, but the connection was horrible and that tab in FF hogged up 8GB RAM all by itself.
The only times I’ve ever run into stuff not working were:
- The GrapheneOS installer bc it uses web USB
- Sites that decide Firefox isn’t good enough (glares at Pearson), though I just use a user agent switcher and suddenly the site works
Might be a niche use case, but I sometimes need WebUSB, WebSerial or WebXR, none of which are supported in Firefox.
Just gotta protect them like with other permissions.Also, Firefox mobile still doesn’t support mutual TLS, and so I need another browser just for that.
From what I read, mTLS should have been implemented from version 138? We are already at 140.0.1 now. I don’t have any use case for it though, so can’t test this.
Seems to work on Nightly, but not on the main build.
Still, that’s a lot more progress on this than the last years.
I run 2 browsers as well, with about 90% of my use on Firefox
I have found that simply being willing to use multiple browsers solves a lot of problems for me
SCNR if they were able to make good decisions, they would never have switched to chrome anyway. /s
tbh, i don’t get all the mozilla/firefox hate. even “the linux project” missed the mark by a mile with his firefox critique.
whatever mozilla does, it’s not even half as evil as google
We learned that from politics in general. Vote for the lesser evil, not for the optimal choice, as there is none, sadly.
I tried out Firefox on my phone a year or two ago. I had a number of issues, including accessing secure pages for work. I have little doubt that it wasn’t Firefox at fault so much as it was narrow testing by website developers, but the end result was problems for me regardless of who was at fault, so I switched back to Chrome.
Because Brave is by default what Firefox is when you install Librewolf instead - and more. And you can refuse to see that and be wrong about it, I don’t care. I use Librewolf because I want to, I still think it’s not the better browser.
Well reading comments here has me going to download Vivaldi to replace Brave.
Thank y’all!
How vivaldi isn’t more popular with tech users that want to use chromium totally eludes me. The browser is super moddeable and the devs have so far been nothing but super open and correct to their community. I don’t think there’s been a single vivaldi “scandal” of note. It literally opera before that went down the drain, and is a better browser on top.
The whole “it’s not open source” mantra has also been thoroughly addressed.
Also don’t get me started on the brave love. It feels astroturfed. I do not get how you can genuinely shill that browser…
I choose Brave instead of Vivaldi in Android as a second browser just because of 1 feature:
Vivaldi won’t force dark mode in all the websites WHEN the device is in dark mode only, it includes a toggle to on or off only and it doesn’t care if the device is light or dark.
I use automatic light/dark mode and Brave and Firefox (with the Dark Reader extension) works well with this.
Also the Vivaldi team is aware of this lacking feature since years ago but they can’t seem to fix it somehow… That’s fine by me, I can work my way without it.
You literally ignored the whole comment section, you madlad.
I can’t answer that question but I’ve always wondered why anyone switches to Brave. I installed it a few years ago because I heard it was privacy focused and it immediately hit me with a bunch of shit about crypto and rewards or something. I uninstalled it immediately.
It does respect your privacy but it comes with bloatware. You can actually remove them pretty easily
“Respect” for you as the user means you shouldn’t have to do stuff like that in the first place.
Eh, gotta make money somehow. I prefer this over selling out to google
it only makes money until people don’t actually remove the bloatware. so if it does make money, that’s telling something
I tried to install Brave and it almost nuked my PC. Completely jammed up. I uninstalled it immediately.
Yeah so true!! I installed it, and it launched an attack to overheat and destroy my CPU. Thankfully I reacted quick enough, and unplugged my computer quickly. However when I turned it back on, all my files were gone. It was cryptomining without my consent. Absolutely crazy!
/s?
I installed it. Crypto stuff is off by default. Ad blocking built in. Multiple 3rd party testing shows it blocks virtually all tracking/fingerprinting.
Firefox/Chrome - you need all kinds of addons and pihole type setups to do the same thing. God forbid you want to use it off your own network, you need additional tools. All these tools break with updates, whether they are the browsers or addons/tools themselves. Brave has never once broken its adblock/privacy settings in the years I’ve used it.
Most of us on here are privacy focused, and want the average user to be that way too. Brave is a one click setup, nothing else needed solution. Is it perfect? Hell no. Is the owner a piece of shit? Hell yes. Does it allow the average user to take ownership of their privacy in an easy and non-technical way? Yes. Perfect is the enemy of good. I will gladly jump ship once another turnkey solution comes along that is as easy and privacy centric that Brave is.
Firefox/Chrome - you need all kinds of addons and pihole type setups to do the same thing.
bullshit
you need a single addon, ublock origin. enable additional builtin blocklists according to taste.
you can have additional addons for additional functionality. does brave have libredirect built in? does it block and redirect google AMP sites by default? does it have a feature to only delete cookies regularly for specific sites?and let’s not forget the elephant in the room: ublock is not working anymore in chrome! google made it so that you can only use the inferior lite version, that can only load much much fewer filtering rules into the browser.
I don’t know if brave kept supporting mv2 extensions, but if they do, I guarantee to you that it won’t be that way for long. it has been relatively easy sailing so far because google did not actually remove support, but it will be lots of work when finally google does remove it, and they’ll be needing to patch it in for every new versionpihole is not used for firefox, and that’s never been its use case. It’s for everything else that uses the internet, but cannot have something like ublock origin: various software, windows itself, android and apps there, smart home and iot garbage.
Honestly this statement of yours proves to me that you don’t know what you’re talking about.All these tools break with updates, whether they are the browsers or addons/tools themselves.
I have no idea what you are talking about. anyone else?
About the addons and stuff breaking, I constantly see posts about this adblock isn’t working because Chrome broke something, this addon is no longer updated, google broke this so that addon doesn’t work. That’s the issue with using 3rd party tools, you have to rely on the tool AND browser to work together, and not break with updates or changes. You also have to trust both the browser AND the tool to keep your info safe and private.
Brave hasn’t had even a hiccup in it’s adblocking/privacy features with all the changes Chrome is implementing, due to how Brave is built. I just want a browser with strong, baked in privacy and adblocking that works out of the box. Brave is that solution at this time.
By the way, you seem focused on Firefox, I’m not attacking Firefox, I’m calling out every browser that needs addons to create a more secure and private browsing experience.
About the addons and stuff breaking, I constantly see posts about this adblock isn’t working because Chrome broke something, this addon is no longer updated, google broke this so that addon doesn’t work.
well yeah, google has intentionally broken all effective content blockers. that’s the fault of chrome. firefox is fine.
firefox will never be able to add built in support for adblocking. reasons include that websites would not just happily drop support for firefox, but some would even put in work to block it entirely! a 3rd party fork can do that, but the main thing can’t because of what will follow.
By the way, you seem focused on Firefox, I’m not attacking Firefox,
I’m not focused on firefox, I’m against anything chrome. firefox is not good, its the least bad, but in my eyes there’s a large difference between it and chromium. we need more engines.
I’m calling out every browser that needs addons to create a more secure and private browsing experience.
I think having this built in is a very dangerous move for a browser that wants to become popular, and does not want to be blocked by sites.
if all you want is to not need to install anything manually, librewolf has ublock preinstalled.
but I’m not confident about the content blocking abilities of brave. I get that it hides ads, but is that’s all it does, or does it also block the resources from loading, tracking scripts from operating? because ublock origin is very effective with that, with its large toolset, if the blocklists utilize them
Like I stated earlier, 3rd party testing places Brave at the top of almost any fingerprinting/ad blocking/tracking/privacy metrics tested. It might not be the product you like, that’s fine, but you can’t deny the testing that proves it works.
I don’t hate on Firefox, far from it. I think it’s great for those who don’t mind extra layers of tinkering/having control on how the browser uses it’s privacy functions. Firefox, unfortunately, isn’t 100% web compatible, and almost every fox user has some form of Chromium as a backup. The discussion about web standards ignoring Chromiuim alternatives are valid, but I feel that’s an entirely different discussion.
I think it’s great for those who don’t mind extra layers of tinkering/having control on how the browser uses it’s privacy functions.
except that you don’t need to tinker. firefox is simply just not doing anything risky, anything that could easily break websites.
you want ublock? install that 1 addon. that’s not any more tinkering than setting a dark theme, or the language.Firefox, unfortunately, isn’t 100% web compatible,
that’s funny because that’s not how I know. as I know, firefox is more up to spec than chrome, but chrome often has its odd nonstandard behaviours which web devs take as standards simply because that’s the most popular browser, and developing for its quirks is easier than developing for standards and also supporting its quirk at the same time
Tinkering - I remember when the ad blocking addons stopped working due to a Google change. Everyone hopped on the webs to see what to do next. Edits and tricks to make Firefox look like Google to the web page, which was needed to make it work again. I was just over here with Brave carrying on like nothing happened.
Firefox compatibility- Even users in this post say they have a backup browser when Firefox doesn’t work.
Look, I’m not here evangelizing an imperfect browser. I’m also not sitting here arguing anyone’s choice in browsers. I use what works for me. I just wanted to clarify some statements made that weren’t correct. The Firefox vs anything else debate is as loaded as Linux vs anything else. Everyone argues and claims their software package is the end all be all when it just doesn’t fit 100% of use cases. I use what works for me. When a better alternative comes along, I will gladly look at it.
Because it is still Chromium based and it means it is fast on Android, plus it comes packed with an adblocker by default which works wonders in closed out systems like iOS, also as many browsers (not all of them) it supports account syncing which it is always a nice plus (I can use a good working version of Brave in all the systems and keep a good flow for example).
I main Firefox in pretty much all the systems, but the Android app is missing a lot of features like tab management, and the iOS client just sucks (Brave works better there despite being Safari based too).
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Firefox still doesn’t have tab groups on mobile
You got downvoted but it is true, it doesn’t while other browsers do, and block ads which is a nice plus.
Firefox offers extension support and that is a reason to forgive it a lot of lacks… But we shouldn’t be conformist about the fact that the Android/iOS client needs a lot of work.
It’s just weird that the post asks people why they use Brave over Firefox/Librewolf and I get downvoted for giving an honest answer.
If Firefox added tab groups for mobile I’d start the (unfortunately slow) transition over to a fork that respects privacy by default.
But unfortunately, Mozilla keeps insisting that it’s “hard to make tab groups in a way that’s intuitive and efficient for the end user” when Chromium already has that as an example. So I still use Brave, because I need my tab groups.
promotion, especially as a ‘security focused’ browser with ‘uncommon’ features.
