Goodbye, Chrome

This certainly isn’t the first time I have tried switching desktop browsers. Every time I run through this exercise, I look for recent performance benchmarks to see if a new challenger has arrived. None ever have, and I never expect one to.

The biggest reason I switch back to Chrome: ScriptSafe.

I could write a whole article on why I decided to block JavaScript, but I won’t dive into that reasoning here.

The biggest draw to ScriptSafe was cloud syncing. As an IT/InfoSec professional, the number of my gadgets only increases. Having to manually keep a whitelist in sync is not acceptable, and I didn’t find any script blocking add-ons with this function years ago.

uMatrix comes from the same developer as uBlock Origin, so I figured I’d give it a shot.

uMatrix testing

Re-creating the whitelist was a painful process, but it was not nearly as bad as I was expecting.

By default, uMatrix allows first-party scripts, whereas ScriptSafe blocks ALL scripts. Much easier!

It took me a about an hour to figure out which combination of third-party scripts need to be allowed for all of the sites I regularly visit. Not bad!

The cloud storage function requires an opt-in and it doesn’t appear to sync automatically, but I’ll take it.

After using uMatrix for the past week, I have actually come to prefer it’s setup more than ScriptSafe :D

I find the UI easier to use and more comprehensive. Currently, there are no plans to go back to ScriptSafe, but I gain the option to go back to Chrome if this experiment fails :)

TL;DR, uMatrix fits the bill!

But what about mobile?

I have given up the ability to set a default browser since going to a single iPhone [dual wielded a Nexus 5x for a few years]. Truthfully, this only mattered if I was clicking a link within a text message, or if I was following an article in my RSS feed.

Chrome on iOS sync’d beautifully with my desktop bookmarks, but it is more for convenience than usability. I haven’t missed this feature yet!

The premise of Firefox Focus was good, but I found myself needing a full browser. Preferrably, one that blocked ads/trackers/scripts, so regular Firefox for iOS was out.

Eventually, I stumbled upon Brave Browser. In addition to a dope logo, it does everything I want!

• Block Ads
• Block Trackers
• Block Scripts
• HTTPS Everywhere

Big win!