Waterfox. All FF features, no telemetry or AI, no "opt out".
this post was submitted on 16 May 2026
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Fennec on mobile.
No, I prefer default Firefox. The product is sound and doesn’t raise any actually security or privacy issues for me. A little bloated? Sure. But doesn’t really affect me to be honest.
I’ve played the custom fork game for a few years with Chrome - I’m not interested in lagging versions or random bugs any more, and because of that experience I now simply want things to work as expected and be updated frequently.
Librewolf, it’s got better anti-fingerprinting, still lets you define your own search engines, and never implemented AI (at least last I checked).
I still use Firefox for when certain sites have a hissy fit with Librewolf’s safeguards (banking, health insurance, etc.) but otherwise it’s my standard.
I hope I get to keep using Firefox in a world where chrome becomes the defacto browser on all mainstream platforms like ie once was.
in a world where chrome becomes the defacto browser
This is already the case.
Nowhere close to the >95% market share IE had in the early 2000s.
Too bad it is
its also fast .its a 10/10 browsing experiance for sure .
No. I just use the default. The forks are typically far behind...
Hey you're willing to help out so I have nothing bad to say about you using vanilla Firefox.
Either LibreWolf or IceCat.
I do use Floorp.
It is, by far, the most customizable and power-user friendly Firefox fork, and it has zero telemetry by default, so I do prefer it over vanilla Firefox because of that.
I also value its focus in performance.
What's performance like? I found it to be very slow the last time I tried it.
I use it daily on my desktop. Works fine. Except yesterday where they published a broken release.. Oopsy
I use Librewolf but have enabled firefox sync on it. Just don’t like the AI features in Firefox 150 and don’t need an in browser VPN. So far it’s been usable. I also use helium browser for when I’m feeling minimalist or a site doesn’t play nice with something that isn’t chromium.
Yes. Zen Browser. Its fantastic once your brain adjusts to vertical tabs.
I prefer vertical tabs. Don't kill me!
I do now. It just took a while to realize it.
Librewolf on desktop and tablet, and Iceraven on Android.
I changed Ironfox for Iceraven as it has better compatibility and personalization.
If you already use Mullvad VPN, I strongly recommend using Mullvad Browser for any task that doesn't require signing into an account to do like quick web searches.
For everything else, I recommend Librewolf if you care about privacy. I heard Zen Browser is good, but I never got the appeal of using vertical tabs since I already have years upon years of muscle memory of having tabs be layed out normally. Maybe there's another niche of Zen I'm not aware of? Not sure.
vertical tabs have been a life changer, but you don't need zen for that anymore, firefox has it natively (thank allah). but i also use a 1440p monitor so im perfectly fine with losing a little screen real estate, but that + removing the bookmarks bar makes it look so slick and imho is way more intuitive since the horizontal tabs eventually clump up and you lose track of what tab is what whereas the vertical one is always clear but you can also indent groupings. highly recommend giving it an honest shot but obv you do you
I switched to Waterfox some time back. Switching was quite painless.
And I use waterfox as well on mobile.
Absolutely same, but I've been switching from Opera. I was kind-of veteran Firefox user but my primary browser for many years was Opera. By 2025, Firefox became slow and bloated as hell, even it's visual design (on mobile at least). I've tried a couple of forks, but they were either slow or ugly in my opinion. But Waterfox was not slow and it's look is exactly what I need: modern but not bloated. So I switched immediately.
I use floorp. But they just released a broken version 🙈
I was also looking for a fork. Major concern of such fork is, if I can trust the developers and package maintainers (in Linux), and if its up to date very close to original Firefox. That eliminates almost all forks. Librewolf was a candidate I would have installed and tried, but its missing a feature: it does not have builtin support for passwords. I know why its excluded and understand that. I know how to use KeePass application to store my passwords. But I personally want it in the browser builtin without any additional applications.
BTW no, my reply is not a request for alternatives. I just wanted to point out a missing feature in Librewolf.
I tried Librewolf too, and I just disliked the design, and it was also very slow for no reason.
Librewolf was a candidate I would have installed and tried, but its missing a feature: it does not have builtin support for passwords.
I always disable password management by Firefox, but I noped out of LibreWolf because it doesn't allow users to block all cookies and then whitelist domains for cookies.
I suspect what a lot of people want is a custom version of Firefox with the garbage surgically removed before compile; where the opt-in options still exist for:
- browser-kept passwords,
- browser-kept payment details,
- blocking cookies,
- whitelisting cookie domains,
- crash reports,
- remote changes between updates,
- scanning everything you download for danger,
- scanning every site you go to for danger,
- etc. .
I'm in the market for one