I have been switching browsers a lot these last few months. The new CEO of Mozilla, Anthony Enzor-DeMeo, stated in his post that “It [Firefox] will evolve into a modern AI browser”1. This rubbed me the wrong way. Granted, Mozilla has been adding junk to their browser for a while now and none of it is good. He floated the idea of blocking ad-blockers in an interview. The Verge wrote: “He says he could begin to block ad blockers in Firefox and estimates that’d bring in another $150 million, but he doesn’t want to do that. It feels off-mission”2.

This prompted me to find a new browser after more than 20 years of using Firefox. I tried many different ones, all with the same end result. I hate them all.

I was going to do a full writeup of all of the ones I tried and exactly what it was that rubbed me the wrong way, but really—who cares? They’re just worse than Firefox in some way or another to me. So where does that leave me? Back on Firefox… well, a port of it. I’ve landed on LibreWolf3, “A custom version of Firefox, focused on privacy, security and freedom”. It’s basically Firefox with the shit ripped out. So far I’m really enjoying it. It’s Firefox from before Pocket and the deluge of crap that followed.

There are a few things I did want to write down though, in case I have to reinstall.

Dark mode

By default “Enable ResistFingerprinting” is on (in Settings → LibreWolf → Fingerprinting). This breaks websites’ ability to detect that I like dark mode by default. Most users use the DarkReader extension to fix this. I hate the way that extension colors things, so I disable this option. And I know, I know, this is not a good idea and against the idea behind this browser, but their core values are not the reason I use their browser.

Backspace

I like to be able to press backspace to go back a page. Firefox disabled this behavior years ago, so users didn’t lose their filled in forms by accident. I like to live dangerously, so I reenable it. In about:config search for browser.backspace_action and set that to 0.

Extensions

I have a small list of must have extensions I use:

  1. uBlock Origin. This is the non-negotiable one. It’s the best ad blocker out there. Period.
  2. SponsorBlock. I am trying to curb my YouTube addiction. Meanwhile though, blocking in-video sponsor segments is a huge quality of life improvement. If you get this one, make sure you go into the settings and also check skipping of intros, outros and self-promotion segments.
  3. I Still Don’t Care About Cookies. Clicking agree on all those GDPR consent things is a pain in the rear, especially as on browser close those cookies get nuked anyway. This extension auto accepts all of them.

Install

As I am on a Mac now, I needed to pick how to install this. Homebrew has an annoying issue with LibreWolf: “Warning: librewolf has been deprecated because it does not pass the macOS Gatekeeper check! It will be disabled on 2026-09-01.”. Apparently this is due to the developers not wanting to shell out 99 bucks a year for an Apple Developer certificate, which I agree—they shouldn’t. So best bet is installing straight from their website. Do note that this means you’ll have to manually update the browser.

  1. Mozilla’s next chapter: Building the world’s most trusted software company ↩︎

  2. Mozilla’s new CEO is doubling down on an AI future for Firefox  ↩︎

  3. LibreWolf ↩︎