I made this post a little while back...
I decided to switch to Firefox even though it felt weird to be off Chrome.
This isn't the world's most important news, but I'd like to make note that Firefox is now my default browser and just feels like my natural, normal browser.
In fact, when I go back to Chrome (which I still do plenty of, because I develop for that browser), it feels as weird as Firefox did when I first made the switch.
My muscle memory already thinks of Firefox as synonymous with "browser" in my normal desktop workflow.
Psychology and small user habits are generally what keep people from making consumer switches. Any campaigns to convince many folks to move to a new tool (either by that tool's own marketing or perhaps by third-party activists) should be acknowledging of how ingrained these habits can be, but also aware that the new thing becomes habit quickly enough.
Top comments (91)
Was trying to switch to Firefox like 10 times and each time I go back to Chrome. Unfortunately, it's just a more smooth and seamless experience, especially on Android phones with the ecosystem Chrome provides.
Give Firefox for Android a try! It's nice as well! I used it for years.
If you sync Firefox desktop with Firefox Android you can replicate a seamless experience in my opinion.
+1
I use Firefox sync and lockwise services on my Android and my home and work laptops (both Linux BTW). I can open tabs of one device on another, send tabs to another device etc. Never faced issues with it. And yes quite fast and less resource hungry then Chrome.
I very recently (about a month ago) switched to firefox on my phone with Preview/nightly but was using firefox on desktop + chrome on mobile. I used Firefox Lockwise on my ipad and phone before that. Chrome on android is quite well made though
Firefox is just... better in my opinion. Firefox is...
I can 100% see why you came back to the dark side of the force... I mean back to Firefox.
You forgot an important one: Firefox can block auto-play movies. Chrome only allows to mute them (as these are typically used for adds Chrome will not block them)
More secure than Chrome? I assume you are using Firefox right now. Please visit this link: аррӏе.com
If you want to learn more, here is the article from 2017: xudongz.com/blog/2017/idn-phishing/
Looks rather obvious on my Firefox, since it is using a serif font.
When I wrote the comment I posted it from the latest Firefox and it looked like the normal apple domain. But even when it's another font. The link still works and there is no warning. On Chromium, you get a nice big warning when you enter the site, and even when you are on the site, the URL changes to notify, that something is wrong. In my eyes, this is a huge security risk
I'd considered switching back to Firefox, but, I've found that it really, really, REALLY doesn't like me leaving gMail tabs open. Unfortunately, working across multiple customers – who each insist I constrain my emails with them to their gSuite-based mail-domain – means that I just can't use Firefox with them. After a couple hours of 2-3 gMail tabs left open, I find that my browser has slowed to a crawl and that, when I check the per-tab memory-usage, the gMail tabs are each sucking down anywhere from 1.5-4GiB of RAM. While my laptop has plenty of RAM left over – even with a few VMs also running – Firefox doesn't seem to manage those leaky gobs of memory real well.
Not Firefox-related, just "generic browser pain": more fun is, I also have several (infrequent) customers that use O365 for their mail, chat and and video-conferencing. Microsoft hasn't seemed to figure out how to let you login to multiple O365 domains within the same browser/session. Worse, once you're logged into one, it's a right pain-in-the-dick to fully log out so that you can login to another. Result: I have to maintain five browser-profiles to make the O365 session/login nonsense not bite me in the ass.
Oh... And one Customer has somehow managed to make it so that I have to use Edge for their O365 account because their geo-aware load-balancer doesn't seem to properly redirect things when running in Chrome or Firefox.
Feels like the early 2000s all over again.
Yeah, I've experienced some of these same issues. I'm personally not very sensitive to any of this any more due to having a pretty darn powerful machine.
Yeah: I've got 32GiB of RAM, so, the rest of my experience is just fine. It's when I flip over to Firefox, though, that I notice "huh... it's really not wanting to flip tabs right now" (fire up system monitoring tool, look for top process and its sub-processes, kill the pigs, get the "<TAB> has crashed" notifications …which invariably are the gMail tabs).
The Great suspender extension really helps lower memory usage. I'm pretty sure there is one for Firefox too.
Yeah. Used to use it on Chrome when I was on an issued system with low memory. Unfortunately, its use isn't really suitable for the "need to keep gMail tabs open so that I get notifiers of new activity" use-case.
Does Gmail have a web notifications feature 🤔? That could be useful
Have you tried using Mozilla's Firefox Multi-Account Containers plugin for your Office 365 problem?
The way I understand it, is that it separates session data so you should be able to be logged into different O365 domains and simply switch between them with tabs
No. Haven't. Didn't even think to look for such a plugin.
Understandable!
I don't know why they haven't made it a core browser feature yet...
I only stumbled on it when searching for a Firefox equivalent to Chrome's new tab groups feature.
It is a core feature. What isn't a core feature is the UI to use it. That's because Mozilla wanted anyone to be able to create a plugin using the underlying code and not force a specific plugin on them. An example of a plugin using the underlying code is Sidebery, a tree style tabs alternative (a much better one if you ask me). You can use multi-account containers without using the multi account containers plugin.
Aaah okay! That makes a lot of sense actually :D
It's entirely possible as I'm quite sure Google products are optimized for Chrome. Which is not fair to the end user but that's it. You could keep gmail tabs open in Chrome and use Firefox for the rest :D
It's been 2 weeks since I switched from Chrome to Firefox and I am totally loving it. For development, I sometimes use Brave since I am used to Chrome's developer tool but firefox works great for almost everything.
I had tried switching earlier but couldn't but this time I just forced myself for 3-4 days and removed chrome from favorites and in a week I was completely in love.
There are also Ungoogled Chromium builds, I use them as I have Brave as my secondary browser and I don't want to get it full of tabs 😅
A win for Team Firefox 💪
I've stopped using Chrome altogether. Personal use is Firefox and work is Brave.
I left Chrome like 9 months ago when I read a new about they're making some changes to APIs used by adblockers (and other ugly stuff).
In the end, I was just using Chrome because its bookmarks feature is very good but nowadays I use Raindrop.io
I love Raindrop.io! It's fantastic as a Pocket alternative.
Yeah it's a great service. Did you replace Pocket (read it later) with Raindrop? I've never used Raindrop to read anything nor Pocket to bookmark xD. I use both.
No, I actually decided Raindrop over Pocket originally as a bookmark manager because Raindrop seemed to have more features and configuration. I primarily use it to organize important tabs and save tabs from any device.
The paid version has a permanent labriray. That's a very useful feature!
I remember the initial article you wrote on switching!
Great to hear you have adapted successfully :)
I want to love Firefox especially since it has a built in screenshot feature and components of it are built in Rust but just starting it up eats up 1GB of RAM while Brave has been pretty good at managing RAM usage.
Have you used Multi-Account Containers?
Description:
Firefox Multi-Account Containers lets you keep parts of your online life separated into color-coded tabs that preserve your privacy. Cookies are separated by container, allowing you to use the web with multiple identities or accounts simultaneously.
One of my favorite features!
I’m in a weird state of browser hopping right now, but Safari is still my go-to. Just has some advantages I’ve gotten used to, like auto-filling passwords with a fingerprint for security, and showing my bookmarks in the touch bar whenever I make a new tab (the first / only time the touchbar is helpful!). Also really like having a keyboard shortcut to add a tab to a “reading list,” so I can clear out old tabs while pretending I’ll get back to them later 😁
Oh, and it’s definitely better for battery life and smoothness while scrolling. Bugs pop up more often than chrome, but I still recommend to you MacBook professionals out there 😎
Been a dedicated Firefox user for I think about two years now. I was blown away by the little features that Firefox has that Chrome doesn't. I honestly do think going back to Chrome would be a hard sell for me. Chrome as a browser is fine I guess but Firefox feels more willing to let me do whatever I want with it. It's very refreshing.
I never really got ON Chrome to begin with, though I've been a Safari user for the most part. Firefox is getting used more than it used to, and Chrome is really for special cases only now. I'm happy with Firefox.
I've never been away from Firefox, not since the day the old Opera died. Still, I can't fully avoid using Chromium, because the dev tools of the framework I work with (Fulcro) are only available for Chromium browsers...
I think at some point I didn't like firefox's inspector and preferred the way chrome offered it. However I just fired up firefox again and the inspector looks so much nicer (actually it looks just like chrome inspector now)
I tried to switch to Firefox but I had 2 plugins that I relied on that stopped working all of a sudden. Like they wouldn't load any data anymore making it impossible to do anything. That was back in January, so I may try to jump back in because I like Firefox a lot.