Newfangled Browser Alternatives
Newfangled Browser Alternatives ę´ë ¨
Youâve got your classic web browsers with the biggest chunks of market share. The Statcounter website gives us a picture of those with what seems like decent methodology:
Theyâve all got their fans. A bigger influence on these stats is browsers that are pre-installed or built-in to operating systems. Chrome is default on Android. Safari is default on Apple-anything. Edge is default on Windows. Samsung Internet is default on Samsung phones. Firefox is default on some Linux distributions. People tend to leave defaults alone.
But what else is out there?
Letâs take a look at browsers with much less than 2% market share. They are based on the open source engines that power these other major browsers (except for a few weâll mention at the end), but do unique things on top of those engines. Itâs an interesting space to watch, as browser software is big business with how many potential users they are, so even niche audiences can build good businesses.
Heads up
Not all of these are particularly new, but hey, they might be new to you as some were new to me while poking around at this. Iâve focused here on desktop browsers, although many of them have mobile versions of themselves.
Arc is my personal daily driver. I really like it for a bunch of reasons. Turns out I really like the sidebar tab structure, multiple workspaces, split view, and the command bar to name a few. Arc did a great job of showing the world that real UI/UX innovation could happen around browsers while using an existing engine.
But Arc, while still getting updates for engine versions, is largely abandon-ware. I tried switching away (but failed). The company behind it is now working on another browser called Dia of which little is known aside from⌠more AI?
- đ° Free (âMaxâ, the AI features used to cost money but not anymore?)
- âď¸ Chromium
The big thing with Horse Browser is that your tabs are in a sidebar and nested. They call that âTrailsâ. If that clicks with you, youâll probably love it. If it doesnât, there really isnât any reason to use it.
- đ° $60/year (7 day trial)
- âď¸ Chromium
Zen Browser is essentially a shameless replica of Arc, only free, open-source (zen-browser), and Firefox-based instead of Chrome. Hopefully they can keep up the momentum long term, find a business model, innovate beyond what Arc did, and find a way past the inability to stream stuff.
- đ° Free
- âď¸ Firefox
From the team at Kagi (the privacy-friendly search engine), this browser also has various privacy-friendly features. Like Horse, itâs going for that nested tabs in a sidebar thing, with new-window based tab groups. Another notable feature is that it supports Chrome and Firefox extensions as well as WebKit extensions â which seems entirely unique.
- đ° Free
- âď¸ WebKit
Vivaldi seems to be able lots of features and lots of customizability. Put your tabs where ever you want them. Full on theming. There is integrated email, calendars, VPN, and even an RSS reader. With stuff like âcommand chainsâ and âmouse gesturesâ, this is power user focused.
- đ° Free
- âď¸ Chromium
It looks like the big play with Wavebox is that it uses big square icons for your tabs (âappsâ) and you can group them together âjust like your phone!â with notification badges and such. Then you have profiles you can switch between, so the drive is configuring your own job-specific home bases. Other features like âfocus modeâ and time tracking make is squarely a âthis is for workâ browser.
- đ°$100/year (7 day trial)
- âď¸ Chromium
(Not to be confused with Wave browser which is weirdly similar?)
I havenât been able to use their alpha, but from the video on their homepage, the UI looks a lot like Arc. Itâs âcontextâ instead of âworkspaceâ and âstuffâ instead of âlibraryâ. The AI feature where you ask questions based on the open stuff in your context seems straightforward and kinda smart. I like where it gets weird and you build your own sloppy homepage full of random rectangles.
- đ°Unknown
- âď¸ Chromium? Probably?
Shift
Shift is definitely in the category of âbrowsers are for work, and work is apps, so hereâs your apps.â Like many (most?) of these browser alternatives, it has workspaces, which means you can be logged into all those apps with your work accounts, switch workspaces, and be logged into all those same apps with different accounts (like a different client or your personal life or whatever).
- đ°$149/year (14-day trial)
- âď¸ Chromium
Brave
Brave was launched in 2016 making it likely much older than most of these. Itâs one of the big classic alternative browsers and has always been a bit controversial. Itâs got a commitment to privacy, but isnât fully open source and literally monetizes through ads. Itâs got Brendan Eich at the helm who is controversial. Itâs gotten into crypto stuff with Basic Attention Tokens, Brave Rewards, and Brave Wallet, and clearly not everyone is hyped on crypto. The UI is nicely polished and certainly has a lot of fans.
- đ°Free
- âď¸ Chromium
DuckDuckGo Browser
DuckDuckGo itself is a privacy focused search engine using Bingâs search index. It seems the entire browser feature set is focused on privacy/protection and ad blocking (except their own).
- đ°Free
- âď¸ WebKit on macOS / Blink on Windows
Opera GX
Of course there is Opera, which really used to be one of the main browsers, and sort of lost that distinction when it went Chromium sold and generally got weird (long story). Opera GX is âfor gamersâ which seems largely aesthetic, but hey, I canât blame them. Seems like a niche worth serving.
- đ°Free
- âď¸ Chromium
Other Notable Entries
- Polypane isnât intended to be a daily driver style of browser, but it is a browser that is designed for web developers and has tons of cool features specifically for that.
- If youâre specifically interesting in privacy-focused browsers where the feature set is largely âmore privacyâ, youâve got:
- Mullvad, the VPN company, makes a browser because even they say âUsing a VPN isnât enoughâ if you want extreme privacy.
- Thorium is a Chromium browser specifically tweaked for speed. Related:
ungoogled-software/ungoogled-chromium.
Very notable are the organizations trying to make entirely new browser engines, and browsers on top of them. Those are:
Godspeed.