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Web Browsers

Once there were many. Now, only two remain.

Brave

This is my browser of choice. It has some extremely high end features, and is Chromium based. Its biggest ticket is that it has official forced support for full monkey ublock origin. i.e. adblock still works on it, and will continue to work.

Brave as a company works by offering services and things as part of their browser that make them money. This is fantastic because it means this browser is being professionally developed. You can turn all of these "upsells" off completely.

Setup

  • Address bar -> right click triangle "Rewards" icon, hide it

  • Extensions bar

    • right click star "Leo" icon, open leo settings
      • Uncheck everything
      • Go back to right clicking the Leo icon select "hide"
    • right click "Wallet" icon, hide
    • right click "VPN" icon, hide
    • right click "Sidebar" icon, hide

  • Appearance

    • Show autocomplete suggestions -> disable Leo, and anything else you want
    • Use wide address bar
    • Always show full URLs
  • Content
    • Speedreader -> disable (personal preference I dont like it that much)
  • Sync
    • This is the Brave equivalent of Google etc. synced bookmarks and history etc. across devices
    • It is a little manual. I recommend saving the "Sync Chain Code" to your password manager (please own a password manager)
    • There is a QR code button to make it quick to add to your phone
  • Search Engine
    • If you want to use Google or anything else, here's the place to do that
  • Extensions
    • Allow Google login for extensions if you have any that need that
    • I personally disable Media Router
    • Manifest V2 extensions
      • Home of ublock, enable it
      • I do not recommend enabling NoScript, uMatrix, or AdGuard

Alchemy's Favorite Extensions

Dark Mode

Choose one

  • Midnight Lizard
  • Dark Reader
  • Night Eye (paid)
    • Patching this extension takes like 30 seconds
      • Don't have an auto-update script for it, so I don't bother

General

  • Cookie Remover
  • Download All Images
  • GoFullPage - Full Page Screen Capture
  • Google Analytics Opt-out
  • Open Multiple URLs

Service-Specific

  • Discrub
  • Old Reddit Redirect
  • Return Youtube Dislike
  • Screenshot Youtube
  • SponsorBlock for Youtube
  • Youtube-shorts block
  • The Camelizer

Firefox

The last "true" browser that isn't Chromium based. Firefox is fantastic, especially on android since it supports full ublock origin there too. I dont personally use it in desktop environments because the UI is a bit clunky. I need my tab->window dragging.