Tired of alternative desktop browsers, thinking of switching to Google Chrome - need advice

Questions
1

I value privacy, more strongly in years past, but over the course of the last 10 years, a number of constant, small annoyances and inconveniences have made me exhausted of trying to maintain privacy at the cost of convenience. I still use, with no plans to stop; Signal with all my family members, E2EE Cloud Storage (Filen), uBlock Origin, and generally as many Open-Source alternatives as I can find; Droid-ify, RedReader, WikiReader, Newpipe, etc.

I have been using Firefox since at least 2015, been on Librewolf for several years as well - but I kept having small irritations keep building up, this or that website wouldnt work, this or that feature or extension would break, all because of these browsers.

So, I switched to Chromium-based browsers, I tried Brave - honestly, it’s revolting, it’s UI is so ugly to me I genuinely cannot bare using it, I am extremely preferential towards Google’s MD3 Design Language, as the UI is something I interact with constantly. I tried ungoogled chromium and then ultimately switched to Cromite (Desktop) and that’s what I’ve been on for the better part of a year now. However, I am still having issues with some websites or extensions not working - the developers are aware of this and nothing’s been done about it for a year. I’m not a dev, so I can’t be expected to go fix this myself.

As such, Im currently teetering on the edge of whether to switch to Google Chrome as my main browser, rather than using Cromite for most of my browsing and switching to Google Chrome every time a website, like Walgreens, or the Google Scholar PDF reader extension, don’t work - because this is annoying, I don’t want to have to be switching between browsers, even infrequently.

Another small annoyance, is that in order to have auto-update on Cromite, I have to use chrlauncher every time I launch cromite to check for updates - which then launches the actual cromite browser, which is a different icon from chrlauncher (image below), so I constantly have 2 browser icons on my taskbar - but, again, it’s a lot of small annoyances all building up that are driving me nuts.

image

Knowing this, if I were to switch to Google Chrome, while understanding the inherent limitations to privacy placed on me by using it, including being logged into my google accounts for ease of use - what are some, if any, steps I can take to increase privacy without sacrificing functionality; flags, browser settings, google settings, extensions, etc? My threat model is not being utterly untrackable, obviously - it’s as much privacy as can be had while retaining seamless functionality, as I would say it’s silly to suggest that stock Google Chrome is as good as you can get without sacrificing functionality, I’m sure there are things that I can tweak to improve privacy using stock Google Chrome with Google Accounts, even if the gains are minimal.

I’m not looking for criticism, but genuine advice for the situation I’m in, to improve Google’s Chrome privacy, or by recommending an alternative browser or approach that solves these problems that I haven’t heard of.

Thank you.

2

I am thinking permanently switching to Chrome too. Only issue for me is uBlock Origin.

Brave is good, but I hate the bloatware they are pushing into my face. I don’t want their AI, password manager, wallet, VPN, rewards, news and so on. I don’t want to install group policies for them. All I wanted for them be optional only. There should be proper option to disable them, and when I disable them, they should have gone from the menus.

I want a simple browser with clean UI.

Firefox has better UI customization but it has its own problems. For example, if you switch your network, it simply crashes. That is frequenly happening with VPNs, especially with Proton. It also doesn’t support app logins from desktop apps. For example if I want to login Google Drive or Deepl, apps are opening login pages, correctly authenticating but Firefox is not forwarding authentication to the desktop app.

(this is for Windows)

3

Personally, on Windows 11, I have tried Brave and Firefox.
But I always come back, and have been sticking to, Microsoft Edge.
It’s integrated, with nice security in place etc.
Added uBlock light, since the other (fork) isn’t recommended and insecure.
What I do is disable all telemetry that is possible.
And then I’m done with it.
Life goes on.
I’m not troubling myself more than necessary since I also have other things to do.
Just my 2c.

4

In your case I don’t see you have alternatives as you have already ruled them out.

But for Brave browser you can try install a new theme from Chrome Web Store.

5

I despise Edge’s UI - and I imagine they’re about equally abhorrent in terms of privacy, so between Chrome & Edge it seems more just like personal preference rather than one having a clear advantage.

Do you disable telemetry simply in the settings, or are there deeper things you’re changing, like any specific flags or files?

6

Unfortunately, themes, and even enabling the touch UI layout, in brave - doesn’t get it identical to stock chrome’s UI, brave’s inherent UI is just too rectangularish rather than truly rounded like Google

7

Have you tried using the flags for brave to remove some of the issues you have faced?

brave://settings/appearance

Toggle off brave news and and widgets to simplify the UI a bit.

brave://flags/#brave-leo

disable leo

brave://settings/newTab

Turn off sponsored images etc

you can also go into the settings/flags to disable web3 content including wallet

There is the option to use extensions to change the look of brave (limited) to attempt a better look for you. If i am not mistaken brave has a flag to go back to one of the older UI that some seemed to like better

8

Browser compartmentalization makes sense to reduce cross-tracking. But if you just want to use one browser, then stick to Chrome. I don’t use Chrome myself, but when I did use Chrome, the thing that I hate is that you can’t automatically delete your browsing history. You can launch with Incognito mode by default, but if you need cookies stored in your browser, you can create different profiles to compartmentalize your accounts.

For example, you can create a Google profile for your Google logins as Profile 1. Profile 2 could be for banking, Profile 3 could be for shopping, Profile 4 could be emails, etc. Different profiles will have different settings, cookies, extensions, bookmarks, logins, etc., but you can use different profiles for when you don’t need to use Google, and you can switch between profiles easily.

Turn off third-party cookies (not sure if it’s off by default), personalized ads, and autofill passwords (I would recommend a third-party password manager instead of Google). Go through the privacy and security settings to see which permissions you need on or off. And since you intend to use Chrome with a Google Account, I would look through the same privacy and security settings on your Google account too. For example, if don’t need to save your search history, then turn that feature off. Same with stored payments and contacts, personalized ads, and be aware of any personal details on your Google account.

9

Edge has the advantage of Smart Screen (well Google has Safe Browsing).
I went through the White papers of Defender Smart Screen. It’s not >as< invasive as the FUD of the www wants to let us believe.

Also, in the settings you can configure it to block PUA and possible malicious downloads.
All this cannot be configured with Chrome.

Which is why I went with Edge.
For the telemetry, what can be disabled in the settings.

But like I said elsewhere, I have to go down some route.

Edit

  1. Turn on reputation-based protection
    Reputation-based protection can guard your machine against potentially unwanted applications (PUA). These applications can slow down your computer, display unexpected ads, or install harmful apps. It can also protect against phishing.
    Windows comes with this feature turned off on consumer machines. Potentially unwanted app blocking can block problematic apps that you downloaded or installed. However, it only blocks downloads if you’re using the Microsoft Edge browser.

So personally, since both (Chrome and Edge) are “bad” privacy wise it turned out to be edge for me.

10

If small things like these are a big reason for wanting to switch to G°°gle Chrome, then you might want to try Vivaldi Browser. It’s so customisable that you are most probably going to have very few small reasons like these to go in the wolf’s mouth. Vivaldi is also privacy focused, has a clear privacy policy, a good business model and a great community it focuses on.

11

@SimplyAnotherAnon “Google is built for tracking.”

12

@SimplyAnotherAnon What’s Vivaldi’s business model? | Vivaldi Browser

13

If you want complete usability, I’m not sure anything other than Chrome, Edge, or possibly Vivaldi, is currently suitable for Windows. You may have to wait for GrapheneOS to make Vanadium cross-platform before a suitable privacy-respecting browser arrives, and that might not be in a while.

If you aren’t restricted to just Windows on desktop (not very likely, I would assume), Safari on MacOS isn’t that bad. It has anti-fingerprinting and tracker blockers.

SmartScreen sends the full URL of a website to Microsoft, but privacy enthusiasts have made policies to try to improve privacy (at least for MacOS and Linux):

I’d say it skews a bit more towards privacy-unhostile. The topic I’m linking below shows how Vivaldi doesn’t do anything super special to protect privacy. Still, the privacytests.org comparison website may have been made by a former Brave employee, so there is probably some bias.

14

GrapheneOS has no incentive to make a desktop browser

1 Like
15

What is the consensus on Cromite vs Brave on desktop*? I still have to use a Chromium browser for some stuff occasionally, and am thinking about ditching Brave for Cromite.

16

Again (besides the policies, which sound cool and I will check out):

1.SmartScreen checks the URL of sites you visit against a local list to determine if the site is part of top traffic or is a known dangerous site. When you visit a top traffic site, SmartScreen does not send the URL to the SmartScreen service. If the URL is on the local list of dangerous sites, SmartScreen blocks it, which prevents any portion of the malicious web content from loading. Microsoft Edge periodically downloads an updated list of top traffic and dangerous sites to the device.

You can go over the rest in the link :backhand_index_pointing_down:t4:

17

Learn to live with the small inconveniences and stick to Brave or FF. Using Chrome (or even MS Edge) with a Google account logged in as your only browser should never be an option.

6 Likes
18

Why use a Google account in the first place? Do you really need bookmark syncing or history?

I understand that small issues are the reasons you are considering this switch. I get it, it is super tempting. As much as there is genuine good faith posts aligned with your requests, I will push back on the basis that convenience is how Big Tech companies get you locked in.

If you are going to use Chrome, Edge, or Vilvadi, please don’t forget about other aspects of your privacy journey. Make sure that you are not locked into any ecosystem. Please keep using privacy-respecting search engine and VPNs in addition to these browsers if possible.

2 Likes
19

First time I hear about this. What extensions aren’t working on Ungoogled Chromium and Chromite ?

Also, keep in mind Chrome is removing all MV2 extensions support in about a month, so whatever extensions broke for you might not even work on Chrome, at all.

1 Like
20

I’d like to point out that you can disable all of this after install in less than 5 minutes and Brave is never going to bother you about any of it again - and you’ll have a Browser completely free of connections to Google AND you can still use uBO mv2.

7 Likes