Waterfox

I am a very new user of Waterfox, but thus far am very pleased. I was looking to switch off of Mozilla Firefox and initially tried LibreWolf, but I felt their modifications to Firefox were poorly executed (in the version I tried). Waterfox feels very slick and professional in comparison. On initial start, there is a very simple way to instantly pull your existing Firefox or Firefox ESR (great for Debian users!) information in, and Waterfox also supports Firefox Sync (disabled by default as a privacy feature which I appreciate). All of the "AI" features were disabled by default as far as I could tell, including more hidden bits in the about:config. Waterfox's original developer has returned and owns the project again via the BrowserWorks company, and released a good statement about his opinions on AI, which is another big reason I made the switch. I appreciate the additional exposed settings in the about:settings menu too, which includes a few security settings that LibreWolf set without letting you customize! I personally prefer the condensed UI choice as well, and the extra settings for the theme are great. You can always go back to Firefox's other themes too. Firefox's new ads for Mozilla's other services are removed, too. All of the extensions I use work great, and I opted to use the Tarball for Linux, so no Flatpak-related issues with permissions or access. Overall, I'm a happy user for now!

Kind of like Ungoogled Chromium in that it's Firefox minus the Mozilla telemetry and services, except Waterfox feels like a complete application instead of one with a bunch of gaps.

Using it is about the same as using Firefox. Less stuff breaks than in LibreWolf (which goes a lot further in its privacy protection). Waterfox tracks Firefox's ESR releases, so it can run behind the main browser in terms of features, but they seem to track security updates quickly. It's compatible with Firefox Add-ons, and the one Firefox service it does use is Sync, which is end-to-end encrypted.

The Android version is solid. When I first tried it out, in-browser translations were missing, but they're back now.

Real installers with updaters for Windows and Mac (unlike LibreWolf), Flatpak and tarballs for Linux (but not ARM Linux yet). The Flatpak has the usual issues talking to KeePassXC

It changes some of my settings after each restart. I like it otherwise, but its hard for me to trust.

It's still early days for me with Waterfox. I recently picked it up after someone reported to be that it is now independent of System1.

As it's based on Firefox ESR updates can be a little slow, but that's not an issue for me. I'm happy as long as I get a snappy and minimal web browser using the Gecko engine. So, yes. It's a breath of fresh air where the market is "flooded" with Chromium browsers.

It's not vastly different from Firefox, but I do like that it's got all the usual Mozilla telemetry disabled (more private), using DNS over Oblivious HTTP (even more private), improved performance, and a collab with Tree Style Tab for a Waterfox sidebar.

I have been using Waterfox for a couple of days and, so far, have not faced any stability issues. Plus, it works with Firefox Sync. Yay!

Using for years. Not always been up to date, but always very stable and friendly.