It's an Arc-Browser clone WIP which uses Firefox as base. It's everything I would want from a browser.
Pros:
- Open Source
- UI-First Approach means it's working towards a modern browsing experience like Arc
- Firefox as base so all Firefox Extensions like Adnauseum/Ublock work on it
- No threat of MV3. Arc has stopped blocking ads for me hence I will no longer be using Chromium at all. Adblocking works like a charm on Zen.
- Highly customizable with a very fast development cycle.
Cons:
- It's in Alpha so expect Bugs and less features
- Still missing some features from Arc like Peek and Command Bar
I would recommend trying out this browser @ https://zen-browser.app/
The stars hypothesis is interesting but I think it was genuinely caused by that youtuber recommending it. The reason it started 2 days before the video's release is because he gives early video access to his patrons, if I had to guess. And that's the only genuinely sus thing about it.
It is worth waiting for some commit history and consistency to be shown before recommending it on the privacyguides site though
It's also a very interesting project since it's basically Arc but on Firefox which runs on all Operating Systems.
I think it's unfair to compare it to Brave which is literally just chrome with an adblocker and crypto. If Arc was open source then it would easily have a lot more stars.
yeah I'm glad it exists, people are a bit too eager to shit on things sometimes. Plus the context is kinda "should we recommend this project now" not "is this any good"
I'm perfectly happy with firefox though, never tried any of these alternative/productivity browsers
just because the domain name has privacy in it and a forum to discuss, doesn't make them experts at privacy.
It's good to be skeptical but I think they know what they're talking about. It's the forum for privacyguides which has been around since 2021, and previously as privacytools since 2015. Many of the people in the thread are active maintainers of the recommendations and knowledge base, where they apply a pretty rigorous set of standards. In fact, I think the only thing you can reasonably knock them for is being too cautious with new tools, but I think that's a good instinct in this case, especially since you don't really lose much by waiting to make sure something is legit and not a honeypot or flash in the pan
Also use Nighttab as new tab page for maximum aesthetic https://github.com/zombieFox/nightTab
God damn it, I just switched to Floorp last week and then you drop this sexy ass looking browser on me? Looks like I'll be messing around with it tonight. This looks tight as fuck.
E: anyone know if Firefox sync is supported? Might be a deal breaker for me if I can't bounce tabs between phone and computer.
E2: never mind I'm a dummy
I dont get the appeal of the big chonky bar on the left. Whats the point of it? Genuine question because when i look at it it just seems like a lot of redundancy with stuff you can already have in the top bar of mosts modern browsers like firefox/librefox
When I saw that and "container tabs", I thought it was going to have a good implementation of vertical tabs, but it really doesn't. No easy folders, no organizational features...If they add some stuff that makes it meaningfully different from Firefox, I might give it some thought, but right now, there's really no point. Better keyboard shortcuts or something would even make me switch, but that bar seems useless now.
In the screenshot, it's in a sort of "mini mode" and the side bar is the tab manager/etc. You can set both that and the url bar to hide and then show on mouse hover. It looks nice but when I was messing with it it feels like it adds more time in your workflow. You have to hover right at the edge too which is annoying to hit if you have your OS bar at top of screen and/or if you have multi monitors with one on the left, since the pressure point is right on the edge. I can see it working on maybe a laptop where screen real estate is a bigger deal though.
I had been using Floorp, which has some of the same features, but this seems more polished. Thanks!
Floorp made some modules closed source or something a few months ago. I don't remember when but I never got into it.
Is there a big reason to stop using Firefox and use this instead?
This looks better and I can use more screen space as well similar to arc. It has some additional features that can be useful.
I love the Arc UI but hate that it's Yet Another Chromium. As soon as the app signing issues for MacOS are solved, I'm gonna jump on this.
What app signing issues? It's working perfectly by installing it from brew.
Oh, nice! I'd been trying to install the latest release from the .dmg which results in an error saying the .app is damaged, but brew seems to work perfectly. Thanks for the heads up
on the privacyguides forum someone mentioned that the signing issue is fixed now
My first impression is very positive, but it's too hard to close tabs.
You generally have to use shortcuts in these kind of browsers. It's missing a proper tab switcher right now so tab management is a bit complicated.
Vertical tabs and tab groups are mandatory for me, gonna switch at some point. Been waiting for exactly this kind of browser for ages
I've been using this in combination with librewolf and I really like it. I'm not a huge fan of vertical tabs when you have over 30 tabs, but it's good for websites you visit often.
I like vertical tabs specifically for when I have a monster number of tabs open.
Only thing keeping me on brave is the native ad-blocking. But I'll definitely give this a shot.
Ublock Origin is superior to any browsers native ad blocker in every way.
UBlock+Firefox is the best ad blocking configuration you'll ever have. You can even use it on android since Firefox on Android supports extensions.
