So, Chrome just killed most of the good Extensions, and you’re looking for an alternative. You’ve looked at all of the competition, and come to a stark realization:

The only competition is Firefox [1]. Every other browser (Brave, Chromium, Edge, Opera…) are all based on Chromium, and will with time all succumb to the removal of Manifest V2, if only because, at the end of the day, they rely at least in part on the Chrome Store.

And so, here’s my advice for switching to Firefox as a Chrome/ium user.

So to get started, Let’s install firefox. On Windows, Visit https://firefox.com and download the browser; On Linux install it from your package manager, whatever that might be - apt, pacman, etc.

The first time you run it, expect to be greeted with well, a greeting! At this point, it’s going to ask you some questions. You can answer them however you want, but I will actually advise you to create a firefox account, and import your cookies and stuff from Chrome. This will make your transition a lot easier, and further, allow you to install Firefox on your Phone, and send tabs between devices, a criminally underrated feature. Oh and you can install the same extensions that you have on your desktop there, too!

Once you’ve got it set up, honestly, you’re already most of the way there. At this point it’s just about Customizing your experience to better suit your needs.

I’m going to list them in the order that I typically install them, along with a note about WHY I install them. Feel free to exclude or include more! This is YOUR browser, not mine!

  • uBlock Origin - The best adblocker, hands down. This is likely the main reason you switched.
  • Auto Tab Discard - Dynamically unloads webpages to keep your computers memory pleasantly unloaded! No more needing 500GB of RAM for 1000 tabs; I did it in 16!
  • Bitwarden Password Manager - My recommended password manager. I suggest importing all your saved passwords into this, and then going into about:config and setting signon.rememberSignons to false.
  • Consent-O-Matic - Automatically handle GDPR consent/nag forms, responding however you specifically feel about it.
  • Dark Reader - Automatic Dark Mode for all websites. This one in particular I recommend making sure is pinned to the browser window’s visible face, so that you can toggle it off for sites that don’t play well with it, but in general most sites do just work.

Other than that, just grab any extensions you want to use - You’ll find most of them exist on both Firefox and Chrome, but the Firefox ones typically match or exceed the functionality of the Chrome versions.

Advanced Users/Power Users/Tweakers 
    Go into about:config and set the following (Change as needed for paths); This will disable extras like AI stuff, suggestions on new tabs, configures a smaller UI, makes the browser better at session restore, and admittedly loosens your security slightly to allow file downloads over http.
    
    "browser.download.lastDir" = "/home/krutonium/Downloads";
    "extensions.pocket.enabled" = false;
    "browser.startup.homepage" = "about:newtab";
    "extensions.autoDisableScopes" = false;
    "signon.rememberSignons" = false;
    "browser.newtabpage.activity-stream.feeds.section.topstories" = false;
    "browser.newtabpage.activity-stream.feeds.section.highlights" = false;
    "browser.newtabpage.activity-stream.feeds.topsites" = false;
    "browser.sessionstore.resume_from_crash" = true;
    "browser.sessionstore.resuming_after_os_restart" = true;
    "browser.cache.memory.enable" = false;
    "image.jxl.enabled" = true;
    "dom.block_download_insecure" = false;
    "browser.compactmode.show" = true;
    "browser.uidensity" = "1";
    "browser.ml.chat.enabled" = false;
    "browser.urlbar.trimURLs" = false;

Now that that’s all done, all I can say is good luck. Make the web a better place.

Notes:
[1]: Ladybird exists, but it’s really not ready for prime time yet imo.