Unless you are reading this on an Apple device, chances are you are using Google Chrome, and nosotros can't arraign y'all. Built upon Google's open-source Chromium project, the browser is generally stable and secure, with the crashing of one tab not affecting the others, and one malicious site having a hard time stealing information used in another. In fact, nearly of Chrome's competitors, including Microsoft Edge, are based on Chromium.

Google is also good at creating the illusion of speed with prediction algorithms that preload parts of web pages that you are likely to visit. With a minimalistic design, you lot'll feel at home with Chrome no thing what blazon of device y'all are using it on, and the congenital-in integration with other Google services and mobile browsing can be very user-friendly.

Chrome'due south advantages come at a cost even so: the browser runs a split up process for every tab you open and every extension that you install. Every such process consumes RAM, and Chrome offers no like shooting fish in a barrel way to limit RAM usage, or fifty-fifty reduce it temporarily without 3rd-political party extensions.

Perhaps a bigger problem is privacy: everything you lot do in Chrome, including every character you type into the address bar, is recorded by Google and linked specifically to you. Particularly if yous use other Google services, you may not want the data to exist cantankerous-referenced. Mobile platforms have several great private browsers, including Bromite, Firefox Focus and DuckDuckGo, only very few Windows browsers truly protect your privacy, and it's important that you know what they are.

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In add-on, you may find Chrome too limiting: it won't allow you add a search field to the navigation bar, making it hard to search for the same term on several websites without infinite-consuming extensions. It also won't let yous add buttons to launch a new private window, testify your bookmarks or clear your recent browsing data, or even create more sensible keyboard shortcuts for those.

Several other browsers exercise certain things better than Chrome. With this guide, you lot should be able to get to know them better and choose the best browser for you.

Brave

Most privacy-focused Chromium-based browsers are basically Chrome clones with better default settings, slower security updates, and sometimes a few extensions that create more problems than they solve.

If y'all desire a browser that works like Chrome (including compatibility with its extensions) and protects your privacy without making yous change several settings, and then Brave is your best bet. Every bit an open-source browser, you can be pretty sure that if it ever starts collecting browsing data, someone volition find that out very quickly.

Other browsers send websites partial information regarding your hardware configuration and software settings, making it hard for sites to track yous based on a rare combination of mutual factors. That isn't always enough, especially when visiting unpopular websites or using hardware that isn't common anymore. Past default, Brave randomizes the data it sends to websites, making yous appear like a different person on every site, and every time you restart the browser.

Brave has the HTTPS Everywhere extension built-in, upgrading many outdated HTTP requests to the newer, secure protocol. By default it as well blocks all ads and trackers, oft greatly improving page load times, but sometimes preventing pages from loading properly. These settings tin can be changed for a specific site through the Brave icon in the address field, or for all sites in Settings > Shields.

For actress tracking protection, you can disable Google login buttons and embedded Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn posts in Settings > Social media blocking.

In addition to "normal" private windows, which but avoid saving your history and cookies, Brave has the option of private windows with Tor functionality, which hides your IP address from the sites yous visit by routing your requests through several random nodes in the volunteer-based Tor network. The obvious drawback of that method is speed, so if you lot desire to watch video anonymously, y'all may adopt to use a paid VPN service.

The most controversial thing about Brave is its business model: while it blocks ads on websites by default (shameless plug: pain publishers like TechSpot who don't utilize intrusive ads or pop-ups), it sells its own ads to be viewed as OS notifications past users who chose to view ads. The ads are targeted based on the user'southward browsing history, but the calculation happens on the user'due south device, without Dauntless seeing that history.

Dauntless takes 30% of the money, and distributes the rest between the users who viewed the ad every bit "Basic Attention Tokens," based on Ethereum. Users can donate the money back to registered websites and content creators of their selection, or trade it for other cryptocurrency. Viewing ads is completely optional, and the Brave Rewards button can be removed from the accost field in Settings > Appearance.

Opera GX

If your problem with Chrome isn't privacy but the need to close it while gaming or the reliance on 3rd-party extensions, y'all may want to check out Opera GX, the "gaming" version of the Chromium-based Opera.

With GX, multitasking is the name of the game, and the best instance for that is the sidebar: at the tiptop, you'll find GX Control. It includes the Hot Tabs Killer, which lets you run across which tabs eat the almost CPU or RAM resources more intuitively than Chromium's chore manager does, and shut them. GX Control also lets you limit the browser's network, CPU and RAM usage. Correct under it, GX Cleaner easily lets you see how much space the browser's temporary files take, and remove some or all of them.

The sidebar also lets you create Workspaces, which are basically unlike tab sets within the same window – something that's merely possible in Chrome with third-party extensions. It has a music role player that supports all of the popular streaming services, and history, extensions and browser settings buttons. Yous tin add a Twitch button, all of the popular messaging apps and more than.

Some of the extensions in Opera'southward store are meant specifically for the sidebar, including tab managers, calculators and note apps. You can also add unofficial apps for YouTube, Google Interpret and Twitter, just in our testing they simply didn't work. Every sidebar button, and the sidebar itself, tin also be removed.

Next to the sidebar, looking similar a small tab, you'll find GX Corner, which is basically a peachy web page with a game release calendar, lists of complimentary and discounted games, a gaming news aggregator, and more than.

GX makes things that are needlessly complex in Chrome easy: Whenever you watch a video, you'll encounter the pic-in-picture show push, which lets yous resize the video and move it around fifty-fifty when the browser window is minimized. In the address field, you can have a snapshot of the screen or whatever role of it, so add blur, arrows, highlights and more than. Y'all can too block ads or trackers for any site.

In the right side of the navigation bar, you'll see the "piece of cake setup" menu, with shortcuts to useful or interesting settings: GX Lights will let y'all synchronize the browser'south theme colors with those of your Razer peripherals. "Forcefulness night pages" will make sure that the text on every site is lighter than the background without affecting images or videos. You can also set groundwork music or globally block ads or trackers.

If privacy is a priority to you, Opera's browsers are not the best option for you. Opera's privacy policy isn't much meliorate than Google'south, and the browsers' optional "VPN" characteristic has been shown to be a proxy service that only channels your data through Opera'southward servers.

Firefox Extended Support Release

The open-source Firefox offers advantages over Chrome in the areas of RAM management, privacy and customizability. The Extended Back up Releases come with the latest security updates, but non with the latest feature updates for erstwhile extension compatibility and to minimize the hazard of bugs.

Firefox ESR 78 is basically Firefox without the touchscreen-optimized Proton user interface. In Firefox 91, Mozilla has removed the option to disable Proton, making ESR 78 our current favorite Firefox release. It doesn't come with the anti-tracking Facebook Container extension past default, but you tin can easily add together it yourself.

As the only browser on this list that'south non based on Chromium, Firefox takes a unlike approach to RAM management: instead of starting a new process for each tab, it uses up to eight processes for all of your content. In Options/Settings > Performance, you can lower that number to equally niggling equally 1. With tens of active tabs, Firefox uses significantly less memory than Chromium-based browsers.

Equally a default, Firefox tries to find a residue between tracking protection and keeping sites functional. In Options/Settings > Privacy & Security, you lot can gear up Enhanced Tracking Protection to "strict," and then change it through the address field for sites that don't piece of work properly. Under "Firefox Information Collection and Use," you can prevent Firefox from sending data to Mozilla.

If y'all right-click on the navigation bar and choose "customize," yous'll be able to add or remove buttons, the search field, and even empty spaces. Y'all'll besides be able to change the density of the interface. Another nice characteristic in Firefox is the ability to save the unabridged page – not just the part you see – as an epitome. Right-click anywhere on the page, cull "take a screenshot," and then "save full page." Similar in Opera, y'all can make whatsoever video run in a picture-in-picture fashion.

If you want to effort both new and one-time Firefox versions at the aforementioned time, you should get the regular Firefox and Waterfox, which is based on Firefox ESR and compatible with Firefox accounts and extensions, but can be installed alongside Firefox. Though beware, yous should apply Firefox for the sensitive actions, both because information technology gets security updates faster and considering Waterfox was sold to advertising company System1 last year.

Other Firefox-based browsers are not recommended, because they are based on older versions and may endure in terms of speed, security and extension compatibility.

Vivaldi

If you are a power user who finds Chrome too limiting and privacy isn't your top priority, Vivaldi may be the best browser for you. If you don't like something virtually this browser, chances are y'all can customize information technology.

You can ready the main menu to be a drop-down vertical carte or a horizontal bar. You tin add actions, move items and categories around, and fifty-fifty remove them entirely (nosotros're looking at you, "get out"). You can create or change keyboard shortcuts or mouse gestures for any activity, and even for chains of deportment.

Y'all can testify your tabs at the acme or bottom of the window, or on either side. You can stack tabs inside tabs in one of three ways: with driblet-down menus, with 2 tab bars, or past showing all tabs just in the active stack.

Y'all can add a side panel on either side of the screen, with browser menus and apps (notes, mail, RSS and calendar) and the option to add whatsoever website with no need for iffy 3rd-party extensions like in Opera.

Even the browser'south themes are more customizable than most others, including levels of transparency and corner-rounding. The browser is uniform with the RGB effects of both Razer Chroma and Philips Hue.

When using a slow internet connection, you can disable a website's images entirely, or only prove the ones already cached on your figurer, through the bottom status bar. You can also choose to play looped animations merely once, or non at all. In Settings > Webpages you can do those things globally.

In the address field, you can block trackers or ads for each site. In Settings > Privacy, y'all can do it for all sites. When visiting a page whose linguistic communication is different from that of the browser, you lot'll run into the option to translate it in the other side of the address field.

What makes Vivaldi a practiced browser for gamers or multi-taskers is the intermission button in the status bar. With a single click yous can pause all media and site activeness, saving system resource. Then, with some other click, you can get back to where you left off.

Like Opera and Firefox, Vivaldi includes a moving-picture show-in-movie button for videos by default. You can also use the page tiling push button in the condition bar to view sites at the same time inside the same window.

The status bar lets y'all capture a full page or whatever part of information technology, and save it as either PNG or JPEG (useful, as the two are quite different). Vivaldi is besides uniform with Chrome's extensions, if y'all really need them.

In terms of privacy, Vivaldi may be better than Chrome and Opera, but isn't as skilful as Firefox, as it tracks you based on a user ID stored on your computer. That tracking is allegedly not used for advert but for knowing how popular Vivaldi is effectually the globe, only it's yet some kind of tracking.

Ungoogled Chromium

The open-source Ungoogled Chromium is a rare example of a product's proper noun that says exactly what the product is. If y'all similar Chrome but not Google, information technology may exist an interesting choice for y'all. The trouble is that while Ungoogled disables many services that rely on Google, it doesn't e'er replace them with something else, so you should only employ information technology if yous know what y'all're getting into.

Ungoogled doesn't have a default search engine, so you need to open "settings" to choose one, or searching with the address bar will simply not work. The browser besides doesn't update itself, so yous should follow the project's GitHub page closely for updates.

Fifty-fifty Google's Safe Browsing feature is disabled to avoid communication with the company, so if y'all want a similar kind of protection you should use an extension such as uBlock Origin. You can't install extensions through the Chrome Webstore interface, just you tin can use it to know how to go them.

On the other hand, the browser uses HTTPS by default, forces popular-ups into tabs, and prevents Windows from setting a security zone identifier on downloaded files. By default it clears all cookies upon quitting, but you can alter that in chrome://settings/cookies. If y'all know what yous are doing, you tin can enjoy a Chrome-like browser without the privacy implications.