Desktop Alternatives

desktop reviews and mentions

• I Switched to Brave Browser
  5 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 28 Sep 2026

  > I LOVED Arc.

  I assume you've heard of it, but just in case you haven't: you should try Zen! It's basically Arc, but based on Firefox, but open source and, more importantly, actively maintained.

  https://zen-browser.app

• Search – A small, fast WebKit browser for macOS, by Office Commun
  2 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 24 Sep 2026

  https://zen-browser.app/ - if you would like a super minimal daily driver

• My battery kept dying at coffee shops, so I built Junction
  2 projects | dev.to | 22 Sep 2026

  Anyway here's what kicked this off: I was at a coffee shop, on battery, working in Zen like always, and my battery just dropped off a cliff. Way faster than it should. So I switched to Safari for a bit just to see, and yeah, night and day.

• Hang on to Your Firefox
  4 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 1 Sep 2026

  Other people do fork Firefox though, like Zen browser

  https://zen-browser.app/

  https://github.com/zen-browser/desktop

• Apple introduces M6 and M5 Ultra for a big leap in performance and AI compute
  8 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 25 Aug 2026

  If the browser being Chromium-based isn’t a hard requirement, it may be worth checking out the Firefox-based Zen Browser[0]. Its UI is very similar to that of Arc, to the point that I’d call it Arc’s spiritual successor.

  [0]: https://zen-browser.app/

• Zen-desktop: Desktop ad-blocker for Windows, macOS and Linux
  2 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 24 Aug 2026

  Not to be confused with Zen Browser[1], or Citrix Xen Desktop[2], or Zen Desktop the desktop blur tool[3], or a desktop with Ryzen CPU...

  Perhaps I should try running this Zen ad blocker with Zen Browser inside a Xen Desktop on a Zen core and see what happens. Hopefully I can find some bug, so that I can file an interesting and confusing bug report. :)

  [1] https://zen-browser.app/

  [2] https://www.citrix.com/downloads/xendesktop/

  [3] https://apps.microsoft.com/detail/9ng7nzt0f9vq

• Mozilla: The state of open source AI
  2 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 17 Jul 2026

  Yes, Firefox itself is a “general purpose” browser, and that’s probably for the best in terms of wide market appeal. Other developers have taken the engine and made power-user-focused browsers with it. Lately I’ve fallen in love with Zen (though after 2 months of use its pinned tabs features still confuse me a bit).

  https://zen-browser.app/

• Google Chrome's Next Update Will Mark the End of Popular Ad Blockers
  2 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 16 Jun 2026

  I really want to like zen but every so often it eats all my RAM. Many have reported similar issues.

  https://github.com/zen-browser/desktop/issues/8932

• dao-browser VS desktop - a user suggested alternative
  2 projects | 24 May 2026

  zen is also a browser, but dao is build for chromium kernel

• Zen Browser
  1 project | news.ycombinator.com | 15 Apr 2026
• A note from our sponsor - AppSignal
  www.appsignal.com | 5 Oct 2026

  Stop vibe-debugging. Every exception, every backtrace, grouped so you see patterns, not noise. Learn more →