Available for anyone to download… only available for Mac/iOS… Windows waitlist… No linux mention…
Okidoki.
It’s chromium, it does that ambient color changing shit I hate, it “anticipates my needs” instead of just waiting my my instruction. This is a browser designed to make me angry.
I tried it for a bit, even daily drove it on my laptop for a while. It has a pretty slick interface, and uses containers so you could, for example, have one container that you are logged into your google account for (say, Youtube), and the rest of your containers you can not log into Google.
The downside is that 1) It’s still not mature as of a month ago. They are making massive changes and adding new features constantly, and 2) It’s still Chromium, so all of the downsides of that are still present.
If they switch to using Firefox or another open-source foundation, I’d be all over it.
Sandboxing/containerizing stored session data like that is really nice. Firefox Multi-Account Containers is an extension maintained by Mozzila and was really the reason I stuck with Firefox even when it really kinda sucked there for a while.
Firefox already has containers. I still have yet to see a browser that beats stock Firefox in functionality, customization and privacy
On mobile I’d suggest Fennec instead of stock Firefox since you can use add-ons without limitation, and don’t need workarounds such as the Firefox nightly.
It’s basically stock with enabled add-ons, and following the official release cycle with 2-3 days delay. Maintained by the original developers of the F-Droid store, so also a highly trustworthy source IMHO.
Thanks for the heads up. I run FF on all my mobile devices so it will be nice to have access to all the addons.
I’d venture out there and say Vivaldi in functionality and customisation.
Privacy probably not, though Vivaldi does quite well.
Sadly it’s a Chromium browser.
Edit: a simple comparison.
According to this Vivaldi protects you from tracking about the same as Chrome and Opera, and both of those provide less tracking protection than even Edge.
Chrome is run by a massive corporation with a reputation for for invasions of privacy. Opera is run by a nation state with a reputation for invasions of privacy.
Vivaldi is far better than either of those.
I’m talking about first and third party websites tracking you. I don’t use Chrome or Opera, but I’d rather only have to trust a browser of my choice, than having to place my trust in thousands of different websites.
The point is, if you care about tracking and privacy, you shouldn’t be using Vivaldi in the first place.
PrivacyTests makes it look like Brave is the only browser you should be using simply based on how good it is at blocking trackers by default. Brave is good, but it has it’s fair share of flaws from UI and terrible syncing to built in crypto and NFT stuff.
This is the key. There are a few projects that can beat it in one way or another, but not all 3. Every project that beats FF in a functional way ends up sacrificing privacy. And those that somehow beat it in privacy are underdeveloped and run into weird compatibility issues or are missing support for key plugins.
It’s not like Firefox doesn’t collect user data at all. Vivaldi is hard to seriously fault in that area.
Unfortunately, Firefox lacks some features that make it a little clumsy at times. But for general use it is great. I keep it installed and use it almost every day because I believe in the browser engine and the need for diversity in that area. It’s just not for every need. At least not for me. That’s where Vivaldi and Edge have to help.
That’s what I’m using now. I think Arc does a better job of organizing containers and tabs, but it’s not worth the privacy/advertisement issues that come along with Chromium.
The issue is that Firefox is, as far as I know, much much more difficult to simply use as just the “rendering engine” for some other customized browser.
There’s the arcfox experiment thing that tries to make firefox look and feel the same as arc, but if arc isn’t mature, then this thing is just simply unusable to almost everyone. It’s still probably easier to do than to make a completely new browser using firefox as a base though.
what about privacy?
From what I gather, while they track feature usage, they claim they won’t track your sites. They still won’t help protect your privacy from other apps, companies, and pages.
Isn’t arc a chromium fork thus subject to Google’s shenanigans?
No, it’s not a fork. A fork is when you take the Chromium browser and change it.
This uses the same rendering engine as Chromium - but the browser itself was built from scratch, uses a completely different architecture, and on other operating systems it doesn’t use Chromium at all.
As for “forced to create an account” Arc is temporarily free. Longer term you’ll have to pay a subscription to use it. So it makes sense that you need to sign up.
Yup, anti freedom, and also closed source so extremely privacy invasive as well.
Yes
And you’re forced to create an account to use it. At least it did a few months back
Except for the millions of Windows users…
and Linux users
Or Linux users
Chromium and excellent do not belong in the same sentence.
From the article:
“The company is also thinking about how to integrate AI into the browser.”
LOL - how absurd. I can’t even tell if this is a real product or just a meme?
It seems like every app is trying to force integration of a version of ChatGPT. It would make way more sense if the OS just had their “assistant” use AI, and just let it recognize the app your using and help out if needed. No need for an AI integration with every app.
While you’re not wrong, the implementation there is very complicated. My solution, which works quite excellently, is if I want to use GPT, I go use GPT
I agree with you. I personally don’t want ChatGPT on my OS either. I just also don’t want it on all of my apps too.
AI AI AI Generative AI
Have you heard about AI yet??
I hate it already! ~Strawberry
I’m not surprised. Edge has it integrated already and it’s annoying.
It’s just chrome with different pitched bells and whistles.
Give me some WebKit based alternatives or something interesting…
Here’s a new WebKit based project that may interest you: https://browser.kagi.com/
Yeeaaah I have been using Orion for a little bit and it seems pretty good on desktop at least.
anyone
Lol, it’s just on mac. No windows version or even plans for a Linux one. Not that I’d use another chromium fork.
Tbf, it says download, not use.
As a non-Mac user, I’m not even sure if “Mac-only” or “yet-another Chromium fork” makes it less interesting.
Why are we excited about closed source Chromium garbage?
I’ve attempted to understand what makes this browser good, time after time, and I still just don’t get it. They claim that they’ve ripped out the UI and created it from scratch, to improve workflow and how we approach browsers, but it’s done nothing but infuriate me, because they just built a gesture based interface with layers upon layers of hidden stuff, none of which is intuitive, and it’s for the desktop. Not to mention the other blunders with their extensions
Closed source, which automatically makes a web browser dogshit and completely useless.
ACAB
All Chromes Are Bastards
The organization features that I’ve seen look really nice. I’ve also wanted something as easy as Safari tab groups… None of these ideas seem to trickle down to other browsers though, it’s a shame
