Cool to see a possible replacement for Arc coming up now that The Browser Company put it aside. I loved it's way of kind of forcing you to use a single window, but multiple instances of it, as well as Little Arc. Will keep monitoring Zen to see how it develops.
this post was submitted on 28 Feb 2025
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It's just... A browser...
I concur. I don't want stylish. I want functional, compliant and for it not to harvest my fucking data. All that fucking flair and visual wankery can get in the bin if it's not gonna do the essentials.
With an opinionated way of how to navigate the internet, it's maybe the most important app you can use
Zen browser is my daily browser since many months now. Most of your fair criticisms I have solved with Zen Mods and playing around in the settings.
The Widewine limitation is really why I will always keep another browser to fall back to: I recently discovered that all of Udemy is non-playable in Zen.
I've started using more Zen Mods recently too, the most important one I would say is Zen Context Menu - which lets you de-clutter the options when you right click anything. There are way too many options being shown when you right clicked the sidebar, but it's a lot nicer to use now.
How did you get that mod to work? I’ve been trying to use the mod but it doesn’t do anything I’ve enabled
It doesn't do anything by default, you have to go to settings > zen mods > click the settings icon next to the mod name.
If you set the options and nothing happened then I'm not sure, it worked for me instantly when toggling stuff off.
I've stayed away from Firefox for almost a decade because I don't like the way that it functions (and I generally don't like Mozilla as a company) even though objectively it's a better browser.
I've been using Zen for the past few days and I really enjoy it.
I'll have to give it a shot then. I'm also not happy w/ Mozilla and I don't really care too much about Firefox's features, but I do want to support engine diversity, so I stick with it.
So Zen might just be my cup of tea. As long as I can block ads, use my password manager, sync tabs across my devices, and it's not based on Chromium, I'm happy. Bonus points if I can self-host the tab syncing.
Has there been any progress in self-hosting sync server since Mozilla abandoned the old version a few years ago and created a behemoth with some exotic database that requires lots of resources?
Idk, I haven't gotten to it yet on my self-hosting journey (still working on eliminating Google). Hopefully someone else has a good answer.
As long as I can block ads
uBlock Origin / Privacy Badger work just fine.
use my password manager, sync tabs across my devices
🤷♂️
and it’s not based on Chromium
Nope.
Yup. I'm just saying I don't particularly care if it's Zen or another browser, anything that fits those requirements is acceptable to me.
So yeah, I'll go test syncing tabs, since that's the most likely to have issues. If it supports Mozilla's Sync, we're good.
Looks just like Arc
True. The biggest difference seems to be that Arc is based on Chromium and Zen is based on Firefox. Given the two, I'd pick Zen just for the engine diversity.
Not even that. In addition to being proprietary, it requires an account to use.
Should clarify that you're talking about Arc there
Yes, true.
?? You need an account to use a browser? That's a huge no from me then...
Nixpkgs has been working on packaging it for more than 6 months now. That is a damning timeframe for both Zen and nixpkgs in IMO equal parts. In Zen’s case, that means that they are packaging their app in a very unconventional way and lagging with security updates, breaking standards (which usually means they are amateurs). In nixpkgs case, that means nixpkgs needs better
buildMozillaMach
support.
I used it in an appImage and came away unimpressed. Using it in a tiling WM, I loved the minimalism….but I just wish it had better security and rendered webpages better. On Brave, websites literally look sharper than on Zen.
Edit: most of my concerns were addressed by the dev themself just down the page a bit.
Down what page? The blog post?
aforementioned Git issues
Yeah, that's always my first concern with forks like this. I care a lot more about security updates than UX.
I used to use Mull on Android, but then the dev abandoned it and left me open to security vulnerabilities, so now I'm back on Fennec, which seems to stay updated. If Zen can stay patched, ideally in a largely automated fashion, maybe I'll give it a shot.
That comment about their security updates is a couple of months old. Zen has made significant changes to how they handle releases to stay up to date with Firefox, some of which were mentioned in the thread.
The Nix package is functional. Nixpkgs sometimes chooses not to add beta software that is receiving very frequent updates, especially if the package takes a lot of resources to build. In those cases, it makes more sense for the package to be maintained outside Nixpkgs for the time being. NixOS users can get Zen from this Flake, which patches the official binary. COSMIC Desktop is another example of this.
Pages not looking sharp sounds like it's probably a font or scaling issue.
Thanks for the update. I did read down the page and saw that. The dev looked really receptive, cooperative, and pro about it.
Agreed. I doubt he expected the project to be anywhere near this popular considering how many Firefox forks there are, and he's been doing a great job keeping up with everything that popularity comes with.
Been my daily driver for a WHILE now. Works fine for most things. Every now and then I run into some oddities.
Been using it for a while, I like it, but they do push out some questionable updates every now and then. Bugs I can understand, but forcing design changes on people aren’t great. Calling out the new tab change they made, I ended up changing a setting to deactivate it. Right now it’s my preferred browser, but I’m still open to looking into alternatives (Mac/Linux).
It's still a beta, I think it's unfair to complain about drastic changes until it comes out
Like the other person said, beta software is expected to go through pretty large design changes. It's not a matter of "forcing it on the user" it's a matter of "my software isn't ready yet, I'm not certain what my vision is, and if you're not willing to put up with me figuring out what I want out of this software then wait for it to release and I'll keep it stable from there"
It's in beta, so large changes are to be expected. I don't think it's fair to blame them for design changes right now.
I've been using it for weeks and I think I'll stick with it. It feels fresh and relaxed at the same time.
One way to solve the “content appearing offset to right” problem is to move your tabs to the right side. Works pretty well for me..