I’m still in the saga of trying to switch to android and hit another roadblock lol. I’m looking for a web browser that implements gesture navigation with linear animations like on iOS. The closest browser I’ve found is opera GX, but the PC/MacOS version of opera runs like shit with 30fps animations for all the UI elements.
You must log in or # to comment.
I personally use Fennec (F-droid build of Firefox), it lets you swipe to switch tabs (like in iOS’s Safari), and learning to press the tab overview button over swiping up wasn’t too difficult. Using a Firefox-based browser also lets you use the many extensions that support Firefox for Android!
On desktop, I use standard Firefox, but you can also use one of the many forks
LibreWolf has extra privacy and security features, Waterfox has a few enhancements, Zen Browser has vertical tabs and only vertical tabs, Floorp is super customisable, etc.
I would advise you not to touch Opera and its browsers with a (insert preferred unit) long pole, they’re even more shady than Google when it comes to privacy and data snorfing.
And a note, Chromium based browsers aren’t preferred as 1) They’re a monopoly 2) They run worse than Firefox based browsers in my experience and 3) The whole Manifest V2 extensions debacle
Of the Chromium-based browsers, there aren’t many good options in my opinion. Chrome and Edge are owned by Google (terrible when it comes to privacy) and Microsoft (terrible when it comes to privacy + would you like to use CoPilot and Bing?) respectively, Opera’s browsers are worse than big G and MS in terms of privacy, and Brave is leaning towards crypto and NFTs. Vivaldi have good intentions but is closed-source. Ungoogled Chromium seems to be good, if a bit barebones.
I agree with all your points except
- They run worse than Firefox based browsers in my experience
It has been proven many times chrome is better optimized on android vs firefox. If I didn’t care about addons, privacy and the bottom navigation bar i would be using a chromium fork. They are that fast and bugfree especially on graphics heavy websites. The lag and speed difference is very much noticeable on low-end and midrange phones. Infact i was daily driving bromite until it stopped getting updated.
Huh, I never knew that. I never used Chrome on Android, only on desktop. And I always found the desktop version of Firefox to be a bit quicker than Chromium based alternatives. Interesting…
You can add the extension to the Firefox browser (Fennec, IronFox, etc.) and use gesture navigation.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/android/addon/simple-gesture/
