Help me decide on moving from android chrome to a more privacy friendly browser
I use the default Chrome browser on Android and tired of it due to mainly two reasons:
- Intrusive ads. It's not just the ads themselves but the overwhelming bandwidth they consume. Plus chrome neither blocks the ads itself, nor allows us to install an extension like ublock origin.
- No Extension support. I've written a few extensions for things like enhancing the reddit experience, a customized new tab, etc. which work on my desktop chrome but not on my mobile since android won't support extensions.
I'm the kind of power user who has the potential to do the right thing but is too lazy and tolerant to actually make the switch!
If only Android chrome allows the extension feature, my problem will be solved tremendously. If I switch to a new browser, I'll not only have to evaluate its effectiveness but also switch to a different password manager like bitwarden (unless I change my desktop browser too).
I initially considered raising a change.org petition asking Google to add Extensions support to chrome on android, but soon realized that it might be a total waste of time and energy, so I've finally decided to switch.
Here are the potential candidates with pros/cons as I understand (but open to new suggestions):
- Firefox: Clearly my favorite as I've used it before. Most privacy centric and flexible to my knowledge, only con is speed/performance and some sites like youtube don't work effectively on android version?
- Kiwi: I've almost made up my mind on this. As I understand, this is based on the open source chromium and is effectively degoogled chrome + extension support?
- Brave: Heard a lot about it lately, want to understand it more but the "take this crypto in lieu of these ads" philosophy doesn't sound very thrilling to me.
Firefox is my goto, although not as fast as Chrome and a bit glitchy (ex: I'll copy a URL in the address bar and it will try loading the page without making any progress, and the "easy" fix is to kill all the tabs..).
I already use Firefox on desktop, so I can leverage features like sending a URL to and from my phone and desktop if I need to look at something later.
Firefox all the way, even my work has it alongside chrome and edge. Use it everywhere I can.
I think that's probably due to Firefox trying to resolve the URL into an IPv6 address, and since not many websites support IPv6, Firefox wait until it times out.
To make Firefox only use IPv4 address by default, you can go to
about:configand setnetwork.dns.disableIPv6tofalsetrue.In case of Firefox on Android though, I am not aware of a way that exists.
I use Firefox Beta on Android, so I have access to
about:config. I'll try disabling it, thanks!Ah, TIL!
I'll try it too!
Let us know!
Disabling IPv6 on mobile especially seems like a bad idea when there's multiple mobile networks that are v6-first, or even, like T-Mobile US, V6 only, with translation mechanisms (464XLAT in TMUS's case) to support v4.
Disabling V6 needs to stop being everyone's go to solution for "fixing" issues, as that disabling is going to keep becoming more and more of an issue as new networks have to go v6-first.
I would assume that only people who are having that longer load time due to lack of IPv6 support would go ahead and disable it.
For everyone else, since it is enabled by default in Firefox, I do not think they would bother changing it if it just works.
My Firefox works great. Is your windows defender up to date? They fixed a 5 year old bug that slowed Firefox down.
https://www.techradar.com/news/microsoft-finally-gets-around-to-fixing-half-decade-old-firefox-cpu-bug
The issue I have is on Android, not Windows.
Hmm, I don't have issues on Firefox on android as well. But I use it for so long that I wouldn't even know how other browsers are.
I didn't notice any particular bugs though, and pages load fast. Do you use uBlock to get rid of all the crap?
Yes I do use uBO.
If it's glitchy, you can probably give the Kiwi browser a try. Not used it myself but I've heard that it's a "degoogled" form of Chrome which means the best of both privacy and performance worlds?
For the sync, you can use bitwarden extension or something, that way you can keep using different browsers on desktop and mobile. Unless some other input comes, this seems like the best course of action right now.
I love this feature, but I wish it were a little more reliable: it seems extremely flakey in my experience.
Firefox nightly is a beautiful thing! I love using it on mobile in combination with ublock origin and dark reader extensions!
When I did have an Android phone, I greatly preferred Firefox to Chrome, primarily for the adblock, but other extensions like dark reader were very useful as well.
Part of what helped me make the switch to FF was doing it on the desktop first. Once I got all my passwords and bookmarks synced over, switching on mobile was easier to do.
How is the performance though with things like youtube and other heavy sites? Has it gotten better on FF these days?
I made the switch full time to firefox from Vivaldi about 3 months ago, performance was one of my big concerns as well since when I last used Firefox ~5+ years ago it was definitely slower.
After 3 months I can wholeheartedly say that Firefox is faster than chrome at this point. I rarely ever have any issues, the exception being that some sites dont work as well on Firefox. For me it primarily seems to be video meeting sites like Google Meet and Teams.
Sometimes you can use a user agent switcher or an extension to trick the meeting sites into thinking you’re on chrome and things like background blurring will start working fine again.
Oh that's smart, I didn't think of that. Will have to give that a try :)
Seems fine for me, I use bitwarden for passwords though. YouTube works great.
When I had Android I always used apps for Youtube, so can't really comment on that one. I don't remember having performance issues with Firefox.
Before I went dumbphone, I used firefox on android and the performance was identical to chrome as far as I could tell.
I'm curious about your move to dumbphone. Was the impact magical or meh? Do you miss anything?
I went with a Lightphone II after looking around for a while. I like it. It is tiny, has hotspot functionality and I can use it for directions, music and podcasts. Unfortunately, I still need to carry a smart phone with me sometimes because the directions program isn't as reliable as the ones on smart phones. I would use it for walking somewhere, but not for driving in an unfamiliar place. For a while, I missed having access to discord and online banking but I have since deleted my discord account and switched to using cash for most things so it didn't affect me too much. While sometimes inconvenient, I like carrying a simple device. It is a nice balance between easy communication and being disconnected. If someone needs to reach me, they can but I don't get the urge to look at something online or check my email whenever I have spare time. My only major issue is that battery life seems to vary quite a bit between units. On my first LP2, I would go over a week between charges pretty regularly. Unfortunately, I let a family member borrow that one and it got destroyed. My new one needs to be charged every 1-3 days which is annoying, but I can live with it.
Thanks for the info. I always get some high end samsung phone, but easily get caught in loops where I'll check socials too much. I've had some success reading instead of socials on breaks, but it doesnt always last.
I use a minimalist app to make the phone text based (no icons) and hide the tempting apps. There is a feature that asks how long i want to be on and will either close it or warn me when time is up.
It helps me be a little more mindful, but essentially just makes it 10 clicks instead of 1 to get where I want to go (a mild inconvenience).
At the same time, i do use the web for good stuff most of the time, and it's rare that I'm sucked away in socials, despite being active on them. I'm intenional for the most part (although you cant control what comes at you) so it works out.
I'll look into the lightphone just to see. Thanks for sharing!
No problem. I run a text based launcher called Unlauncher on my backup smart phone. No colors and no icons to distract me. I was just doing that for a while, but wanted to go further because it would still distract me from time to time. If you have any more questions about the lightphone, feel free to reach out. If you want to get a dumbphone (or just a dumber phone) check out this: https://josebriones.org/dumbphone-quiz It's a site made by someone who is very active in the lightphone community. Will give you some recommendations on what phone to look into.
Perfect! Thank you!
Yes, the minimal app I have is similar to unlauncher.
I'll do some more research.
Firefox and DuckDuckGo. DDG also has an extension that blocks trackers . I've been using it for a couple of months now and ads are damn near nonexistant.
YES, just echoing that the DDG browser plus extension does give a huge boost in privacy. My DDG tracker_blocker today says:
Blocked 19,346 tracking attempts across 12 apps in the past 7 days
Almost twenty thousand trackers blocked. Until I'd read its reports I'd had no idea tracking was so pervasive. The ad-blocking is excellent too.
If you like this feature I should add that the Brave browser also does this by default.
It does, but I have a hard time supporting brave because of the way they operate. I'm not interested in supporting a browser full of cryptocurrency BS especially when there are alternatives that do the exact same thing without it.
Totally fair. I'm not here to defend their business practises. I feel like it was more a time and a place thing for them. I can easily use their browser and not interact with any of their Crypto/NFT stuff.
That makes sense. I did look into it, but I just have a hard time with using a product that goes so heavily against my values even if those features can be disabled. Obviously nothing against anyone who does use it, but I don't think using a blatantly pro-cryptocurrency product is a sacrifice I would be willing to make even if it was in the name of improved privacy & security.
Yeah, I love DDG for its app tracker-blocking as well.
At my last job, they were talking about how government regulation and all these privacy-initiatives are destroying the ability to show super-targeted ads. But don't worry! The tracking ability in mobile apps is becoming more mature and we can get way more info than we did with the old techniques.
Hearing that made me go and delete a ton of apps from my phone.
I have recently switched to DDG, the tracker blocker is amazing. I'm loving the lack of ads as well. It reminds me of the old days where you just got search results instead of 15 Ways To Buy That On Amazon
I need to cull out apps that are tracking as well, soon.
Firefox for Android works well. Really well. Just be aware that you can't load all desktop extensions, there's just a small subset available. uBlock Origin and Bitwarden are part of that subset, so that's an important start.
There are ways to get a Firefox with full extension support working, you can google that. I'm not doing it, it's not worth the effort for me.
Youtube works OK in Firefox for Android, and uBlock removes 100% of ads. I still installed Youtube Revanced, which is the far superior experience. That app also includes SponsorBlock, which is important because that extension is not available on Firefox for Android.
Firefox on Desktop works perfectly, and if a shared password manager is important for you I'd just switch over on Desktop as well and just use Bitwarden. It should be no problem to export all your passwords from Chrome and import them straight into Bitwarden.
Just as an aside, there is an official Bitwarden app for Android, and it's pretty okay.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.x8bit.bitwarden
I can't quite figure out why bitwarden is an extension on mobile when it's also an Android app. I run the app and it does anything I can imagine the ff extension does.
Oh, really? I'd love that. I've tried the addon but can't log in to it correctly. Maybe I'll try again.
Somebody somewhere wants it only in the browser rather than everywhere in the phone, maybe? I suppose you could have one Bitwarden account phone-wide and another just for Firefox? All edge case scenarios at best.
There are so many other more useful extensions to port, it's beyond me too.
A lot of people recommend Firefox, which makes sense. But, if you do want a chromium based browser that is actively maintained and has stuff like adblocking I can highly recommend Vivaldi.
I’ve been using Vivaldi desktop for years now and swear by it. It’s never let me down. I’m waiting for them to release an iOS app because having the ability to sync my settings to mobile too would be incredible.
Would like to chime in with Vivaldi love, written from Vivaldi! Used to use Firefox. I forget what pushed me to swap but I can tell you I haven't looked back since.
What pushed me away from mobile firefox was when they revamped the whole UI and removed many useful features. Like rearranging tabs and (most) extensions.
After that progression, I switched to Vivaldi and have been very happy with the tab handling, tab groups, etc.
Looks like you can rearrange tabs groups in Firefox now, but Vivaldi seems less glitchy. I still use Firefox on desktop because of the excellent containers and window grouping support.
I think that's what pushed me! The prioritization of the new stacks. It's much more out of the way and easy to manage on Vivaldi.
Another thing I'm recalling now is the landing page Firefox has. I've never been a fan of it and it's so cumbersome.
As an aside, does that name have anything to do with the Italian King Garibaldi? I've heard people joke about that rhyming a lot when it comes to Vivaldi!
No, I don't think so.
The founder of Vivaldi is also one of the people behind the original Opera browser (before it moved to chromium and was sold to a Chinese company).
:)
I tried Brave for a while myself (about 6 months) and it's better than Chrome for sure in my opinion but still couldn't beat out FF for me.
In the end I came back to FF and that's where I've been since. They've gotten (at least in my experience on A13 and Ubuntu) far less glitchy as they used to be.
I do notice a bit of a speed delay but I'm also running some add-ons (Clear URL, privacy possum, dark reader and Unlock) that can probably take some of the blame and it's still not slow by any means.
And it probably goes without saying that I don't use Chrome at all.
Did you use any of the cryptocurrency stuff? I remember Brave's original pitch was they wanted to revolutionize the whole ad industry, but it's rare I hear any mention of that these days. Now the pitch just seems to be Chrome with ad block.
I never did mess with the wallet or crypto stuff. I've never been interested in it myself. I only tried it for the privacy features but especially the Ubuntu version was extremely slow to start in my experience.
As far as ad blocking like I said I use Ublock Origin on FF but I also use dns.adguard.com as well as AdAway (rooted mode, from F-Droid) to help and it's not as good as a PiHole would probably be but it takes good care of me nonetheless.
Did you happen to install it from a Snap package? The startup time of those things drive me nuts.
IIRC I just used apt following the instructions from Brave's site but it definitely took ages to start
Brave is pretty ok, sometimes gets a bit fucky (random crashes/freezes). I am now using it alongside FF Nightly (mostly for Tildes + scripts).
According to this page, you can build "chromium for android" APK yourself if you're a pro android developer who knows the Linux toolchain and has 16GB+ RAM machine. At the end of the day, I think this is what Kiwi is?
But I guess there must be more difficulties in the actual process once you factor in compatibility across all the android devices and versions.
Edit
Apparently, they provide snapshot builds of the APK too! With a stern warning that it's "raw and volatile", and user must consider the "Dev" or "Canary" builds instead.
Kind of, but as OP was saying the issue with Kiwi is that it's a parallel fork with a lot of changes from the mainline Chromium for Android code. They eventually pull in some security fixes from upstream Chromium, but it will always be behind. That's why it's a potential security risk.
I highly recommend Brave. I've been using it on mobile for a while.
You can disable the crypto wallet and that won't happen and you won't see any ads.
It does not have extension support, but it's been pretty good for me. Its built in tracker and ad blockers are good. And I like the UI. I also have the DuckDuckGo app installed. I don't use its browser, but I have the app tracker blocker enabled in the app which runs as a VPN on the device and blocks so much shit every day for me.
I'm seeing a lot of recommendations for Firefox, which I love, I'm using it to type this on desktop, but I've been under the impression based on remarks by Graphene and PrivacyGuides that Firefox on Android was less secure due to a lack of site and process isolation. Because of that, I use Brave and have all the sketchy stuff turned off.
I would love for someone to correct and enlighten me if I'm wrong, though. I can't really find any other sources other than some GitHub issues.
PrivacyGuides
GrapheneOS
Another site (which I believe PrivacyGuides has referenced in their github issues) is madaidan's insecurities which does cover much of the Firefox versus Chromium issues. At the end of the day this is a case where OP needs to develop a threat-model and weigh the pros and cons of all options. For my usage I landed on using Firefox for desktop usage and Brave for mobile, although I am still apprehensive of Brave as a company.
Not much love for Brave so let me throw in my thoughts.
I have been using Brave for... At least 3 years. I don't actually remember when I switched fully over. Brave on android works great, blocks all ads by default and is never slow even though I usually have between 20-50 tabs open at a time.
I get the hate for crypto/NFTs. That shit is a scam, especially NFTs. However, for the BAT crypto I think the idea behind it is decent. Choose to watch ads, earn it and give it to websites you want to support. I don't know if the adoption is there to a point where it makes sense to waste your time with it. I tried for a couple months and decided it was pointless. So I turned it off/opted out and honestly now just forget that it is a feature.
I think you will be happy with Firefox or Brave, so why not just try both and see which you prefer? Both are excellent options in my opinion.
I personally prefer using the android version of Brave over Firefox.
I've been using Firefox on both Linux and Android for a long time and haven't had any notable Firefox-specific problems with performance or sites not working. For extensions it's only nominally better than Chrome though, in that for whatever reason Mozilla only lets you install from a specific tiny subset of extensions--you don't get access to the full Firefox addon library or have the ability to sideload. There is a work-around but it's a convoluted process and requires you to use Firefox Nightly or F-Droid's Fennec build.
Bizarrely you also can't set your home/new tab page to a url on Firefox for Android. You're forced to use their "Firefox Home" screen which is not very customizable and shows ads and other crap by default, and the best you can achieve is to disable everything and blank it out. That alone is annoying enough that I want to get off it, but I haven't found any alternatives that I like which also support webauthn (which I use to protect various self-hosted stuff that I don't want to expose to the general public).
I also rule out Brave. It could be the greatest browser on the planet but as long as it's got that weird crypto side-gig attached to it I'm going to pass. Nothing will sap my enthusiasm or trust toward a product or service quicker than being affiliated with cryptocurrency or NFTs.
Kiwi doesn't support webauthn so I haven't used that one much, but I know a lot of people like that one so it's probably a solid choice. I used Bromite for a while, which is more or less de-Googled Chromium with an ad blocker. It doesn't support native extensions but it does have built-in userscript/Greasemonkey support which was good enough for me--the only deal breaker was again lack of webauthn support (which comes as a necessity in anything de-Googled because webauthn is only available on Android via Google APIs).
-- edit: I'll also throw in with the other commenter(s) here who have cautioned against using those one-man de-Googled ad-blocking Chromium forks (like Kiwi and Bromite) in that they're always going to be slow at getting security patches, so if that's a big concern for you it might be best to avoid those.
Do you use uBlock Origin? I never see ads in Firefox, not on the home screen nor in other sites, which I guess is thanks to uBO though I have other privacy Add-ons also installed in FF. I actually didn't know the home screen showed ads or other crap.
I don't--I use NextDNS to filter out bad domains for ad blocking and usually don't bother with additional extensions.
To be honest I've never actually seen what the default Firefox home page looks like because the first thing I do is toggle off all the options to make it blank, but a couple of them are called something like "show sponsored shortcuts" and "show sponsored stories" which I assumed are some sort of ads. I wouldn't think an ad blocking extension would have access to modify the home page content, but maybe it's doing something like that for you.
I recently pivoted my Android browsing from Chrome to Firefox. I wasn't able to completely shift my desktop usage (my primary personal computing device is a Framework Chromebook, after all), but I've also recently started using raindrop.io instead of in-browser bookmarks and that's helped to ease the transition a bit by allowing me to effectively sync bookmarks between different browsers.
I also tested a few other mobile browsers along the way before settling on Firefox. I found the PrivacyTests.org Android browser comparisons to be pretty helpful on evaluating how "private" each browser actually is. While the Brave browser did score very well, I just find the company super sketchy (for a lot of the reasons Nadya mentioned. Firefox seemed to strike a good middle ground between privacy and features, and I have immense respect for the Mozilla Foundation.
I'm also started using Firefox Focus as my default browser so that any links I open are handled in a rather locked-down browsing environment which doesn't retain any data between sessions. I manually open the standard Firefox app for intentional browsing (hi, Tildes!).
Came here to say this, well done on beating me to it! While it's not my default anymore, to me it's near perfect, I don't hoard tabs on my phone and ephemeral browsing is just what I want.
The one thing I wish it had was Dark Reader baked in. After the sun goes down it kills my eyes and that's the one thing keeping me on mobile Firefox.
If you want that 'Focus kind of behaviour, you can tweak a couple of settings in Firefox:
And you get ublock, etc.
Side-recommendation: I bought a lifetime AdGuard subscription years ago, and it's probably the best investment I've ever made. You can install it as a local VPN on your phone, all network traffic is filtered and all ads and annoyances are eliminated. It requires some fiddling to install the certificate on Firefox, but nothing too complicated.
According to AdGuard, in the last 7 days, it saved me 1.6GB of data and blocked 18177 requests
I personally use Firefox, to be specific, Firefox Beta as it allows me to load my own extension list and go further beyond what Mozilla has vetted OK for mobile.
It is quite fast IMO and it syncs with my desktop fine (and unlike Google's, I trust their sync to actually be private on an implementation level), which is a plus. I already used Bitwarden so the history/bookmark sync is mostly convenience for me.
As for your bulletpoints:
Here are the extensions I am using with the custom lists on Firefox.
Another vote here for Firefox, though I make far more use of Einkbro.
Firefox:
Cons: Zooming text/font is an absolute and inexcusable pain in the netherlands.
Einkbro:
This is a browser specifically targeted at e-ink devices, based on the FOSS Browser. Whilst it doesn't support extensions, it comes with adblock and the ability to block both cookies and javascript, with easily accessible toggles for both.
Among the e-ink features are a white background toggle (that usually works), page-based navigation, with predefined touch regions on the page, and font bolding.
(If you've not used e-ink devices, scrolling ... tends not to work particularly well, and I really miss Einkbro's pagination mechanism on other apps.)
There's also a pretty killer feature of save page as ePub, which can save not only individual web pages (as with a save-to-PDF feature), but append multiple pages to a single document. You can thus build your own "book" of specific articles on a topic, by priority, or to share with someone else. The ePub can be opened in an ebook reader of your choosing.
There are occasional glitches and the UI can change fairly substantially between revisions (though it seems to be stabilising). This has been my go-to Android browser for the past two years.
Other mentions
I switched from Android Chrome to Fennec (Firefox) a couple years ago when DNS-based adblocking stopped working on Google Search ads. It's a no-brainer for me.
Cons:
Pros:
As far as extensions go, some of my favorites are:
You don't need to change password managers. Google passwords work on many android apps, of which firefox is one.
My passwords invariably end up in both firefox and google's password managers and that seems fine.
I am currently posting this from Brave on an Android. The ad-block is built in and can be disabled, and since it's Chromium it's identical to Chrome (with a couple minor differences I'm sure, though don't know of any current ones) so using it is pretty comfortable. Last time I tried Firefox for Android it just felt clunky, but that may be different.
As far as crypto goes, I haven't ever used the wallet. Genuinely forgot it was there. I've seen people complain about it using Google, but I believe the search engine can be set by the user. At the very least, I'm in the habit of opening a private tab for searches so I don't clutter my Google search history and the default engine there (for me) is DDG.
The one significant downside I've encountered: you can't transfer bookmarks due to how they're encrypted. Learned that the hard way when one phone got its screen busted. Had to go through the bookmarks one by one to add the most important ones.
I use FF with uBlock Origin and Privacy Badger on my phone. Works perfectly fine. No issues with any sites. Performance is fine. I don't think you can notice a difference unless you're sitting there with a stopwatch timing multiple browsers.
I'm using Mull with uBlock Origin these days. Very happy so far.
There is another option that I haven't tried yet, Mulch from DivestOS.
I mainly use firefox on mobile because I use it on desktop.
It is pretty slow and doesn't have much extension support (you can get ublockOrigin at least)
I have both the main firefox and the focus variant since it's waaaaaaaay faster, like 10x faster and more responsive, but it's a private browsing only browser that clears tabs after a while so I use it for quick searches.
At one point I used dolphin browser, but I haven't used them for years.
Interesting, I use Firefox on desktop because I use it on mobile. It's fine, but like you say it's slow. Basically the entire reason I use mobile Firefox is that it has uBlock Origin and Dark Reader. And because I like living in the botnet and having all of my stuff shared between my laptop and my phone, that means that I have to use Firefox on desktop, even though I frankly think it's inferior to Chrome on desktop.
To your point about not having much extension support, I saw elsewhere in this thread that allegedly you can use any extension you want if you switch to the beta version of the app, though I haven't been able to test that yet.
Edit: I finally got a chance to test, it doesn't appear to be true?Edit again: Or maybe, but it's a complicated process?I've been using Firefox on Android as my default browser for several years now with little-to-no issues.
It can struggle to hold webpages in memory sometimes and doesn't support as many extensions as Firefox desktop does, but it's still extremely powerful. Also, it's rare, but you can sometimes run into websites that Firefox isn't compatible with.
It has uBlock Origin for blocking intrusive ads, "YouTube High Definition" for customizing your YouTube experience and "Video Background Play Fix" to be able to turn your screen off when listening to songs/podcasts.
I personally am much a Firefox fan rather than a Brave fan, but the mobile gecko engine has no site isolation or isolatedProcess which depending on your stance, is one of the biggest cons for a browser, no sandboxing of processes.
I'd definitely still use Firefox on desktop any day of the year lol
I got new Android phone (after almost 10 years without Android) recently and while setting it up, I could choose the primary browser. Since I already use DuckDuckGo as my search engine of choice AND it was available in the list of browsers, I went with it.
Well... It definitely is not for everyone. There is no history whatsoever, it doesn't suggest you sites when you are typing in the address box, it does have "Nuke" button that closes everything, all tabs at once and cleans all cache etc. It has "protection" against nuking for servers of your choice (so that you can save credentials and don't have to login again after nuking). If you close a tab, it's gone, no way to reopen (at last from what I know).
So why even bother if it's such non-user-friendly ou ask? It can and does block a lot in default. I can't really say how much as I didn't try to sniff the communication on the LAN/wifi, but from user stance it almost seems like it hase even some kind of ad block built in. Also the things like third party cookies seems to be cut off by default. Oh and it has bookmarks, so you can at least save your frequent sites to visit them without typing the address in.
In summary DuckDuckGo seems like very privacy oriented browser that lacks some user-friendly features simply because it is very strict on the privacy side. I like it, I use it and I'm writing this reply through it.
I use bromite. I thas some ad blocking built in, is faster than firefox (from my experience) and is included in the rom I use already (calyx os).
I also use adguard through dns-over-tls when I am not at home where I use adguard in a home server.
There are other privacy-related reasons to avoid Chrome beyond lack of extensions and ads. Even if Chrome were to add these features you may still choose to use a different browser to take advantage of tracking protection and avoid invasive telemetry.
Also you may want to consider using an external password manager. Something with a proven track record. Browsers are programs that are designed to execute other people’s code.
Here's what I use and why:
Mull
I use it for my main daily browser, setup for private mode only, basically a replacement for firefox focus but with extensions support. Nothing is saved on my end after every session, just for a quick internet searches.
Firefox
For sites that I wanna keep logged in. Basically big sites only, e.g GOG, Steam, Shopping Sites (app doesn't allow for some stuff to be displayed), etc. Used rarely, only when needed.
Fennec
For stuff that I don't want wiped after every session, basically a temporary bookmark. Sometimes it's game's wiki for when I'm playing games that require opening those a lot, sometimes it's stuff that I wanna read later on.
Hermit
For making liteapps, I use it for forums that doesn't have an app, like Tildes, and opening GoogleForms that I use frequently for work stuff.
Kiwi
Chromium based with extensions support, I used to use it a lot because it's the only one with userscript extension support, now firefox have one, but I still keep some things here.
1DM+
Used it for a download manager, no browsing at all.
Note:
Another recommendation for Firefox. I use it everywhere and it syncs my browsers across devices. I use Firefox nightly on Android, so there has been hiccups occasionally, but the regular Firefox(which I also have installed) is rock solid.