Funny - are there any other known instances in the history of software where you have to pay extra to remove actual features?
Also, don't use Brave.
this post was submitted on 05 Jun 2026
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Who is the target audience for this? Without those features isn't Brave just like any other Chromium browser?
It being free on Linux is pretty interesting.
Lmao it's like the play store tax
Isn’t that just helium browser
In the sense that they are both Chromium? In that case it's just Vivaldi as well.
a couple minutes to click through vivaldi's settings will turn off all the annoying stuff (similar to firefox, but firefox is quicker to 'set up'). i've never seen it re-enable things like microsoft loves to do.
vivaldi is what i use for a chromium-based browser when i need to check web client 'compatibility'; and i like that you can customize the toolbar (like you can in firefox).. i move the back-forward stuff to the right side of the address box, and add the separate search box (so suggestions can be enabled in it but off for searches in address bar).
Afaik Helium is unbraved Brave
Not really, it has some patches from ungoogled-chromium, brave, and others. But it doesn't use Brave's ad blocker, bundles uBlock Origin instead.
Is Brave not FOSS? How come nobody has already made a debloated fork of the browser?
There was a fork, it was called braver. I think it got sued and then shut down? Not too sure.
What browser should I use then thats not brave or Firefox?
Waterfox, librewolf
you should use firefox and turn off the 'ai' crap (one toggle) if you don't want it. a few more clicks turns off the 'sponsored' stuff and 'telemetry'. if that's too much for you, then librewolf. zen, perhaps, if you want something a lil' different.
Why not Firefox?
I use Librewolf so I don't have to worry about Mozilla adding things and enabling them by default
Konform, Zen, Floorp are solid ones to check out
+1 to Zen and Floorp. Haven't come across Konform before, thanks!
Safari/Epiphany.
Vivaldi
I use Vivaldi, european and against the AI hype
Most of those features are opt-in anyway, so there's really little to "remove". That's just a way for them to fund the development without resorting to deals with Google and the likes or selling users's data.