Good news.
LibreWolf is one of the best privacy browsers out of the box.
I agree. I think LW serves much the same niche as Brave (easy privacy without much of a learning curve)
My personal perspective:
Librewolf doesn’t provide anything that can’t already be achieved with Firefox (in fact virtually every privacy protection Librewolf enables was built by Firefox (and Tor) contributors and is present in Firefox.
But that doesn’t mean there is no value to Librewolf. Librewolf serves a particular type of user quite well, more or less a similar demographic to Brave Browser, those who desire privacy, but lack either the knowledge, time, interest, or confidence to harden their browser themselves. For this sizeable group of users, I think Librewolf is a very reasonable choice.
Regardless of whether you start with Firefox and harden it yourself, use a template like Arkenfox, or want a turnkey solution like Librewolf, you can achieve more or less the same configuration. It just depends on how you want to get there, and the degree to which factors like reliance on an additional smaller 3rd party matter to you.
In terms of the Firefox family of browsers I think all of these options have a place and a comparative advantage in at least one specific area:
- Firefox mildly hardened (etp strict, https only, gpc, uBO, and a couple other tweaks)
- Librewolf
- Firefox w/ Arkenfox (“hardened” Firefox)
- Mullvad Browser
- Tor Browser
relevant, but personal frustration
A mild frustration of mine, is that because Librewolf has been debranded/rebranded, and because there is a bit of bias/distrust of larger projects in this space, less informed users often misattribute Firefox features present in Librewolf as being Librewolf features, and misconstrue Librewolf as “fixing Firefox” when in reality it is leveraging features built into Firefox, and is much closer to a pre-configured Firefox profile, than an alternative to it (LW’s configuration is largely based on Arkenfox’s user.js template). This is not a criticism of Librewolf as a project, just a frustration.
edit: IIRC the (valid in my eyes) reason LW isn’t recommended officially by PG (apart from automatic updates) is that compared to just using Firefox itself, it introduces potential vulnerabilities (trusting a smaller project/additional 3rd party, potential for delayed updates, etc), while not solving any additional privacy/security problems that can’t be solved with a well configured Firefox or another recommended option (Brave, Mullvad, Tor). But remember, something not being recommended by PG, just means its not a recommendation, It doesn’t mean it is an anti-recommendation.