Dumping Google Chrome? Here’s the best browser to replace it | ZDNet

It seems that to quite a few of you, the idea of dumping Google Chrome for a browser — even if that browser is better — is like pulling wisdom teeth. Despite it being a bottomless pit when it comes to eating system resources and has become the bloated browser it was initially meant to be an alternative to, people love it.

And yes, while you can make it a little less awful, I’ve been beating this drum for years, only to realize that it was a battle I was losing. This was bought home to me the other day when I loaded Google Chrome onto my M1 Pro MacBook Pro — a machine that’s an absolute beast when it comes to making things run fast — it was made clear to me once again just how kludgy Google Chrome was.

The best way to improve your browsing experience is to dump Google Chrome and switch to a better browser. 

After all, it’s not like there aren’t plenty of options.

See also: Ditching Google Chrome was the best thing I did this year (and you should too)

What I do is that I use more than one browser. I don’t mind having two or three browsers running at once. 

On the Mac, Safari is nice, and nothing can beat it when it comes to performance and power management, but it is missing a lot of features that I liked about Google Chrome (specifically, the Chrome ecosystem has far better support for extensions).

On Windows, Edge is great. It’s fast and lightweight, but there are question marks over privacy.

I find Firefox and Opera to be great too.

And Brave. 

But a lot of readers got in touch to ask me what my single favorite browser was. It seems that running multiple browsers isn’t for everyone.

So, what’s my favorite browser?

It’s Brave.

There’s a lot to like about Brave. It’s fast and easy of system resources. It’s got a good track record in terms of privacy, and it runs all the Google Chrome extensions I need it to run.

You go to the Google Chrome web store, find the extension, and download it.  

Now, some readers are surprised by the fact that I hate Google Chrome but love Brave. After all, Brave is built on the Chromium engine that powers Google Chrome (as is Microsoft Edge and Opera).

Yeah, that’s odd, right? But it’s clearly not the Chromium engine that’s the problem with Google Chrome, but everything else that Google has plastered on top.

There are a lot of Chromium-based browsers out there. Here’s a list from 2019. 

It’s weird how browsing with Brave feels very much like browsing with Google Chrome, except I get far better performance (the speed with which pages load up has to be seen to be believed), better battery life (more than an hour on my laptop compared to running Google Chrome), and far better privacy protection.

Also, switching from Chrome to Brave was a snap. Everything worked, and because the two browsers share the Chromium heritage, everything felt familiar and easy to use.

Brave is available for Windows 64-bit, Windows 32-bit, macOS Intel, macOS Apple Silicon, and Linux, and can be downloaded for both iOS and Android from the relevant app stores.

In second place would be Firefox. It’s a solid, reliable browser that is packed with modern features and yet feels fast and smooth.

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