My Browser Setup
2026-04-20
Web browsers are awesome. They let you see all kinds of cool and interesting stuff, connect with interesting people, and are—whether we want it to be or not—a central part of daily life for most people. Mental Outlaw put it best: your operating system is just a bootloader for your web browser. There are a litany of concerns with web browsers, and if you found your way here, I don't have to go over those ad nauseam. Privacy is one thing, but cognitive warfare is another. When we've gotten to the point where even the FBI recommends an ad blocker for your browser, that's a good indicator of the state of things. But cybersecurity, like any other form of OPSEC, is always going to be a game of cat-and-mouse. Of course, not everyone needs to have as hardened a digital profile as a sysadmin or investigative journalist, but some amount of protection is good for anyone depending on their use case.
Do I want to trust any of the Magnificent Seven with every last bit of my data? Not really. I'm not one of those idiots, though, who fully decries those institutions as a cabal profit-driven sociopaths. Yes, they are businesses, and businesses have to make profit not just to line billionaires' pockets, but in the sole pursuit of self-perpetuation. No profit means no business, which means no goods and services. Goods and services are good, okay? I like using stuff; I like running water and working sewage systems; I like having food to eat and places to go. Anyone who understands anything about how the world works knows that businesses aren't worried about profiteering for personal gain, but about remaining competitive with other businesses. It's like war, and all is fair in it. Of course, corporate social responsibility is important, and those institutions have to be held accountable by either the governments that oversee them or the markets they wish to serve.
So as a consumer, that's what I wish to do here.
I use ungoogled chromium, a fork of the Chromium web browser sans Google integration. It's maintained by relatively unknown hobbyists, and while that already makes me want to put on my tinfoil hat, it is something I generally trust over Google itself. I'm just gonna tell you right now: you will never fully de-Google, okay? You shouldn't want to fully de-Google, either. Google, despite all the flack they get, genuinely helps maintain much of what we love about the internet. They pay the best of the best to do important work, and they care just enough about open-source software to receive some kudos. Does that mean I fully trust them? You shouldn't fully trust anybody, but I do trust them somewhat. I still have a Google account, but I don't use it for every single minutia of my daily computing. That's the key thing with the Magnificent Seven: don't give everyone everything. Compartmentalize what you do give them, and hide what you can. They might try to take it underhandedly, but they respect you enough to let you opt out if you are privy to it.
As a respectable Linux user, one might wonder why I use a Chromium browser instead of the more popular choice, Firefox. Firefox is a great browser, and it's way more extensible when it comes to tweaking settings and adding useful userscripts like Arkenfox or Greasemonkey or whatever else, but its engine, Gecko, is the least efficient when compared to other engines on the market. WebKit (Safari) is the best in terms of performance, but there aren't really a lot of good browsers on the market for Linux users (yet), and so as a result, Chromium is the way to go. Brave is a decent option too, especially considering that they have that new Brave Origin for free on Linux and if you want to support them directly, you can. Not bad, but I have my setup just the way I like it and don't care to migrate. If ungoogled chromium hits the shitter, though, that's probably where I'd go.
Regarding security, there's one thing I do that I think anyone can and should do with their browsing experience: disable JavaScript by default, and allow it on a site-by-site basis. So many cyberattacks, scams, and trackers are run with JavaScript. There are sites you can trust with it, but there are so many sites that seriously don't need JavaScript to function for their intended purpose and use it for the express and sole purpose of tracking the shit out of you. Any site where you just read stuff doesn't need JavaScript enabled; any news site, publication, or blog does not need JavaScript of any kind. Popular websites I keep JavaScript disabled on are Substack, Medium, any major news site or magazine, and YouTube. You're wondering how I use YouTube, and the answer is that I don't. If I want to watch something, I'll look it up on Kagi, copy the link, and go into my terminal and type mpv [YouTube link] and call it a day. I rarely even use Invidious instances anymore because, honestly, YouTube content just fucking sucks, okay? None of it is good. Do something else on your computer.
Regarding extensions, I use a few, but try to keep that minimal for the sake of performance. uBlock Origin is a little tricky to get on ungoogled Chromium, but as of this post, it's still possible. Thankfully I don't have to write up how to do it since someone else already did. Thanks, Sagar Naresh, very cool! Also, make sure that you put uBlock on medium mode when you install it. It blocks all third-party sites by default, which is exactly what you want. Make sure to be very selective about what domains you enable on uBlock. Some might want to use other extensions for this like Privacy Badger or Decentraleyes, but those are bloat since you can already do what those do with uBlock on medium mode. With uBlock on medium mode, you might have to finagle a bit with the permissions when you go to new websites, but it's worth your time, trust.
Regarding other extensions, you'll need to get the chromium web store extension before getting all the other ones on the Chrome Web Store. Their installation guide is good enough, so I'll let you read that at your leisure. Extensions I use regularly are Cookie Auto Delete, which is mostly for performance efficiency. I also use Canvas Blocker to help prevent browser fingerprinting done by most websites. Fingerprinting is basically when a website loads up all the different pieces of information about your system and uses the dozens of different variables in combination to pinpoint the exact identity of your machine. That's done obviously for targeted advertising, which even though I don't see due to uBlock, it's just kind of nice to have because it's plug-and-play and I don't have to really think about it.
I also use this Reader View extension because most websites are super distracting and stupid and I don't like that, so I set up this extension to make all of my reading look like my site for the most part, which is very based and cool. Also, the Kagi Small Web extension is really nice when I'm looking for some cool finds. My site is on there, thank you very much.
One other thing I want to mention for those who don't know: sites like YouTube and Instagram and Spotify and other media-sharing sites started putting trackers in all their share links. So when normies click the "share" button in their app and send it to you, you'll see a bunch of gobbledygook at the end of the links and it's gross. So with that, you have to sanitize the links. Usually, you can spot the trackers because the links contain an operator at the end, signified by a ? and then the tracker behind it. Here's an example: https://youtu.be/EY39fkmqKBM?si=2ru9Wj4RKyk6glIM — the part that says ?si=2ru9Wj4RKyk6glIM is literally just a tracker. ?si indicates the share ID so that YouTube can track what's being shared across devices and apps that aren't theirs. That's disgusting, isn't it? Instagram's is ?igsh and I don't remember the other ones off the top of my head. So when you're getting sent that stuff, don't just click the links outright; make sure you copy them and sanitize them before seeing a funny video about ginger people not having souls.
To put a bow at the end: browsing the web is great. I do it pretty much every day, and finding stuff on it is great. Information is awesome, but it can also be exhausting. It's up to us to make it less exhausting.
Anyway, if this was helpful to you in some way, I'm glad.
Go be kind to someone today.
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