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Just the Browser: tools to remove AI and other bloatware from Chrome, Edge and Firefox
(justthebrowser.com)
I switched to Watefox myself. It is comfy and no AI.
this post was submitted on 22 Jan 2026
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Same
or just download vivaldi or librewolf.
These don't have the tab organization and swiping gestures I like, which is a bummer.
not sure about swiping but vivaldi definitely does have tab stacking/grouping (customisable) and vertical tabs; librewolf either has it by default since they baked in tab groups into upstream or it's able to be enabled in about:config! i just don't know if it's officially in yet since i mostly use nightly.
FYI if you want to edit the Firefox policies directly and save it in /etc/firefox/policies/policies.json, this is the file they are using
"policies": {
"DisableFirefoxStudies": true,
"DisableTelemetry": true,
"DontCheckDefaultBrowser": true,
"FirefoxHome": {
"SponsoredStories": false,
"SponsoredTopSites": false,
"Stories": false
},
"GenerativeAI": {
"Enabled": false
},
"SearchEngines": {
"Remove": [
"Perplexity"
]
}
}
}`I have my settings in /etc/firefox and a symlink to distro's /usr/lib/firefox-esr/distribution. Easier to remember.
Just use Librewolf
As a libreworlf user, I'd have to advise some caution to regular users. A lot of sites are broken as images won't load and "fancier" web apps don't work super well either. Yes it's an easy fix, but expecting someone to go look in the config files to get an image to load is too much for a lot of people
I haven't experienced this behavior. Can you provide a URL for me to test against.
That's why I recommend Waterfox instead to non technical users
The defaults are bad and some options are either: fully protect fingerprinting OR no protection at all
I really like the Zen browser. It's Firefox-based, open source and privacy focused with AI removed but it's also really pretty and is built around vertical tabs
You know what would be nice? If the group gets saved as bookmarks (maybe Session/group-name) and you could just save/load such a session as a group.
I love zen browser and its workspaces. I just cannot use any other Firefox forks anymore without it. It's more than just containers in Firefox.
Ia this just desktop? No mobile?
For the time being yeah. I still use Firefox on mobile myself but I do hope they release a mobile version at some point
Ironfox on mobile of you'd like no telemetery and enhanced privacy.
Zen browser my beloved 🥰
For those interested
https://librewolf.net/installation/
https://codeberg.org/librewolf/issues/issues/1919
Thanks to @acockworkorange@mander.xyz for the context below.
The settings that Mozilla packaged in were the main big ones, Claude, ChatGPT etc, it didn’t look like any of them were locally hosted or even if a locally hosted model could be chose. Local AI… where the model itself and all the token are processed on either your own machine or another machine controlled by you certainly isn’t violating privacy, but as I said the choices on offer were none of these.
LibreWolf by default gets rid of anything that seeks to abuse your right to privacy, you won’t even find Google or Bing in your search engine. Naturally this will also apply to AI providers. Unfortunately, at the moment, we can’t trust Mozilla and by extension with AI items so these things were removed. That doesn’t mean you can’t install third party AI extensions.
Also you can host your own search engine for even more privacy.
The relevant bit from the second link:
The settings that Mozilla packaged in were the main big ones, Claude, ChatGPT etc, it didn't look like any of them were locally hosted or even if a locally hosted model could be chose. Local AI... where the model itself and all the token are processed on either your own machine or another machine controlled by you certainly isn't violating privacy, but as I said the choices on offer were none of these.
LibreWolf by default gets rid of anything that seeks to abuse your right to privacy, you won't even find Google or Bing in your search engine. Naturally this will also apply to AI providers. Unfortunately, at the moment, we can't trust Mozilla and by extension with AI items so these things were removed. That doesn't mean you can't install third party AI extensions.
Thanks for taking the time I didn't initially have to provide context.
Also if privacy is more of a goal you can self host a search engine with searxng
I switched from Firefox to Librewolf about a month ago and it's been wonderful. I can't imagine what it would take for me to switch back to Firefox. I'll probably ride Librewolf until the project dies or gets corrupted.
I know I'll get flak for this, but I am sticking with FireFox, because it saves my passwords.
I’d recommend switching to something like Bitwarden for your passwords so you can take them with you and also switch your stuff around if you ever want to
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You can switch to WaterFox and it seamlessly uses the FireFox sync to use all your passwords. Very easy drop in replacement.
I've been using Librewolf for some months now. You can migrate your Firefox profile into Librewolf, that's what I did and it retained my passwords. I'm not very tech savvy but it does have some kinks, my browser clock is off I've tried tinkering with it but gave up. And especially with the Resist Fingerprinting enabled it seems to not retain my 2 factor id for sites when I ask it to remember me.
The clock is part of their fingerprinting resistance strategy. It doesn't provide correct timezone info to sites.
Your browser clock is not off. LibreWolf, Tor Browser, Mullvad Browser etc. set your browser's reported timezone to GMT to not reveal which timezone you're actually in.
And I don't understand what you're talking about in the last sentence.
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So can librewolf… its got settings!
You can still use firefox sync as well
it's got settings
Well yeah, Librewolf is basically nothing but settings.
Firefox settings.
Confuses me no end when people rage against Mozilla and then recommend a product that cannot exist without Mozilla.
A software has roughly three parts: core functionality, UI, default settings. Zen does the UI part and default settings different.
Whats confusing about it? People took something that was going bad and made it good again. Thats the benefit of open source. Even if Mozilla goes closed source the already existing forks can continue
Even if Mozilla goes closed source the already existing forks can continue
Theoretically yes, practically no. Maintaining a secure modern web engine that's up to date with - and a part of - setting web standards is something that costs tens of millions per year. Sometimes this even spills into the hundreds of millions.
Random fork projects don't have the resources to do that.
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given what "edge" means among the teens these days, microsoft really should go back to the old browser name.....microsoft goon
I don't get what was wrong with the name of Internet Explorer.
They don't want you exploring anymore. Exploration would take you away from their profitable walled garden.
I think we should go back to Netscape.
You know, like Landscape or Manscape, this is Netscape, where it automatically trims out all the AI, Trackers and Ads.
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Marketing sucks, IE was forever tainted. Like now, even if Copilot ran entirely on solar power and cured cancer, solved all hardest math problems, somehow achieved world peace and solved hunger, etc, people would still hate it.
Great move for those that don't want to migrate, but I'd recommend just switching to Vivaldi if you like chromium browsers, librewolf if you are used to Firefox, and if you use edge you aren't even reading this so whatever.
Edit: I guess if you can get this to work on a work computer where edge is your only browser option perhaps, that would be nice.
Yeah, I snuck Firefox portable past the IT goons, I wouldn't risk anything else.
Don’t mind about the AI addition. The worse thing for me is that it doesn’t seem to support custom OpenAI compatible endpoints nor Ollama. Wtf?! This should be the norm for the more privacy conscious community
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