Moving browsers… again

It feels like almost an annual event when I shuffle around the browsers I’m using, but I’m sure it’s not that often. None-the-less, Safari has, again, forced my hand,

A few years ago I was having some odd issues with Safari, my usual browser of choice, which forced me away from it until, many months later, they seemed to resolve themselves. Now, though, an issue that I absolutely cannot find a fix for me, has me re-evaluate again.

Why Safari?

I default to Safari for the simple reason that it’s the most ecosystem compatible browser when using Apple devices, but also that it’s kind on battery life. However, it is rather simplistic and there is a lack of extensions for it, all of which I’ve been begrudgingly living with.

For work, though, I use Chrome, due to various requirements for that.

So, what’s wrong with Safari now?

Amazon. I can’t access it. The page crashes and I cannot work out why. It does the same on my personal and work MacBook so appears account related. Switch off all extensions and clearing cache and cookies does nothing. It works fine whilst I’m signed out – sign in and it crashes. It’s likely that something specific about my Amazon account is causing Safari to crash. But not other browsers.

It was the last straw.

What did I switch to?

It was time to look for something else, and Microsoft Edge has been recommended to me many times, so that was the one to try. It’s like Chrome but isn’t Google, which is always a bonus for me.

If you’ve not tried it before, it’s built on Chromium (the same as Chrome) but without all the Google bits. Instead, Microsoft foists Bing and CoPilot AI onto you, both of which can be turned off. Whilst Microsoft has its own store of approved and verified extensions, you can also use Chrome ones as well (albeit without knowing they’re 100% compatible, but I’ve not had any issues so far).

It has features that Chrome doesn’t have, inc. some battery savings options, which are welcome. I also have a Windows-based handheld gaming console, so being able to sync browser settings with that is welcome.

How’s it going?

And a few months into using it, it’s working great. Of course, there are always “niggles” and some are due to issues of it being a non-Apple browser, such as the fact that I can’t use finger-print ID on the desktop version to log into sites as the Apple website.

Safari will also auto-fill confirmation codes sent to SMS and email but it’s a bit hit and miss on Edge – SMS works some of the times and email not at all. Again, that’s unlikely the fault of Edge but of Apple’s restrictions.

But otherwise, yeah, it’s nice. I wish they’d be less forceful in trying to push Copilot onto me (I have it turned off but it’s still present in the right click context menu), and Bing is so tightly integrated that there are some areas where I can’t just change it (I can’t find it now, but there’s a sidebar option which uses Bing and I couldn’t find any option to change that).

Will I switch back?

Like before, I suspect whatever the issue with Safari was will get resolved. Will I switch back again?

I’m not so sure. Whilst Safari gives me tighter integration with the Apple OS, as well as a leaner, less-battery-hungry solution, Edge is close enough, whilst also giving me much better site compatibility, as well as access to much broader range of extensions.

Only time will tell but I feel that, unless Microsoft does something heinous, I may stay. Having said that, having just read Tim Berners-Lee’s recent autobiography, learning what Microsoft did to the web with Internet Explorer, may make me think again.

What are the other options?

What I would love to see, though, is a stripped back browser, totally standards compliant, with compatible with Chromium extensions but without all the bells and whistles (and forcing of their own products) that comes with others. Give me some tab organisation and that’s about it.

• DuckDuckGo is promising but doesn’t support third party extensions, which means no 1Password, for instance
• Development on the Arc browser has stopped so they can concentrate on their AI browser
• I’ve tried Vivaldi but can’t get on with it. I find the UI cluttered and not intuitive and it’s the opposite of what I want, with its 1,001 added features
• Opera now has a Chinese owner and, in recent years, has integrated AI and crypto wallets into its software. No thanks.
• Brave is a close second to Edge, but its crypto-currency based rewarding system is worrying, as is some of its past issues, along with one of the co-founders

Firefox would be a choice, but some of the extensions I need for work are Chromium only, and I don’t want to run one browser for work and another for personal (Chrome and Edge let me have separate profiles, one for each).