By Willow (willowashmaple.sbs)
December 17, 2025
For a good part of the past decade, I have been experimenting with FLOSS web browsers that are lightweight, functional, private, and low on resource use.
Iceraven is one of the deMozilla'd versions of Firefox for Android. Unlike the official Mozilla releases, however, Iceraven allows users to install add-ons that are for the desktop Firefox (no guarantee that they all will work, however). Mozilla sync with a Firefox account is possible.
Zen Browser (for Linux, 64bit; MacOS; Microsoft Windows)
I played with other Firefox-based browsers such as (new) Midori and Floorp, but they are still very bloated and heavy on resource use. The Zen browser is so far the best one I've tried so far. Mozilla sync with a Firefox account is possible.
Helium (for Linux, 64bit, available as an AppImage file)
Helium is an improvement from unGoogled-Chromium, in that anonymized installation of extensions from Chrome webstore is possible (unlike unGoogled-Chromium, which requires users to download .crx files and manually install them). To maximize privacy, it does not synchronize with a Google account, and the password manager is disabled. It is extremely lightweight and fast even on old or low-end computers.
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