user.js VS Betterfox

Re: firefox and privacy, if you want to use firefox for privacy, consider using https://github.com/arkenfox/user.js . There is a case to be made that Firefox (with arkenfox's user.js) is one of the best privacy-respecting but still fairly usable browsers.

For extensions, I recommend people follow the recommendations[1] in the arkenfox repo and either harden their firefox or use librewolf. Umatrix is unmaintained since 2019.

[1] https://github.com/arkenfox/user.js/wiki/4.1-Extensions

For macOS : Thunderbird and you can harden it even more with this : https://github.com/arkenfox/user.js

only arkenfox

This article is shit. https://github.com/arkenfox/user.js/ is what you want.

If you make time to dig through settings and change them away from their official use (99% of users don't), then you should use a customized setup (in this case, a user.js). That way, you're good to go no matter what Firefox fork you use.

> Firefox remains a stable option to come back to everytime

Don't get me wrong, I've been using Firefox for the last decade and I don't intend on using anything else for the foreseeable future, but Mozilla has no idea what they're doing with Firefox nowadays. Firefox View is the most useless thing I've ever seen, that expiring "independent voices" theme picker was some weird hippie stunt[1], the latest UI redesign which split the tab from the window looks hideous, and it's not like Firefox doesn't have things you can tweak for a more private experience[2]. I miss Firefox Test Pilot where they tried out different new features, I found a lot of them to be very useful but sadly lots of them didn't make it.

[1] https://blog.mozilla.org/en/products/firefox/firefox-news/in...

[2] https://github.com/arkenfox/user.js/

Like others have said you can customize the browser to the point that it doesn't even look like the default anymore. Or customize it to maximize privacy.

You can apply Betterfox using USB debugging, but it takes time to set it up: https://github.com/yokoffing/Betterfox/issues/240

or for more configurations, https://github.com/yokoffing/Betterfox/

I use Brave/Firefox, so I might be biased, but I think they are the best options. If you want things to be lightweight, you could just remove some of the fat from Firefox using something like Betterfox.

> Most of the preferences in this will actually reduce the target-able attack surface

Can you point to anything specific that reduces the attack surface?

When looking at the "securefox" config, it does a bunch of strange things, like enabling embedded TikTok links (https://github.com/yokoffing/Betterfox/blob/443710b0738ebc8f...) and disabling UITour (https://github.com/yokoffing/Betterfox/blob/443710b0738ebc8f...) which Firefox uses to highlight menus and is only accessible by approved Mozilla domains (https://searchfox.org/mozilla-central/source/browser/app/per...).

It's a very strange mix of configs.

I didn't say Floorp was doing anything wrong, Betterfox is: https://github.com/yokoffing/Betterfox/blob/d2359e4e75a8a13fd28e3843cc1b0aac328370f8/LICENSE

But you can apply either Arkenfox's user.js or Betterfox's anyways, kinda defeats the purpose of using a test version but ok I guess

Also, on Firefox, you can use Betterfox user.js to improve security and performance, without breaking anything.

Config user js from https://github.com/yokoffing/BetterFox -> it removes all telemetry and Mozilla bs like pocket, sync, etc.