A New 'Zen' Browser I'm Excited to Use..

[@SavvyNik]

What browser are you currently using?

[@Nick-rs5if]

Brave and Vivaldi concurrently.

[@FrankKumro]

FF

[@spike7319]

Librewolf+ Brave

[@raimg1816]

Brave as main. FF just for testing an rarely

[@ContemplativeCat]

I'm quite enjoying Zen.

[@FrankKumro]

At least it's not another Chrome regurgitation, Zen *might* be interesting depending on how Mozilla screws up FF in the future.

[@the-real-zpero]

Instead, it's a FireFox regurgitation. I'm sorry what's the difference? At least Chromium is a good foundation, unlike FireFox.

[@lotkjasdfh3772]

Firefox is a better base, even if only by the fact that it doesn't contribute to Google's browser monopoly (and there are other benefits, like no manifest v3)

[@PyVerse-47]

@@lotkjasdfh3772 cultist detected, firefox is way worst than google when they dont have any market share, if they succeed in beating down google, then it will be a nightmare 100 times worse than google also google have monopoly right now, firefox is abandoned by the mozilla foundation and is living off google's support

[@s4yto]

@@lotkjasdfh3772 brave has manifest v2 support, your point is useless

[@linklovezelda]

​@the-real-zpero in what way is the Firefox base inferior to the chromium base?

[@Jaxon-c4k]

I'm excited for the LadyBird browser launching in 2026. Unlike Zen or Brave it's not built on preexisting code and has a new codebase. The devs are prioritizing Linux over Windows which is awesome.

[@grandasperj]

I hope they will make some sort of compatibility layer to fix some probems we already see with webkit. That fact that it prioritize linux is really really cool.

[@balsalmalberto8086]

It's going to bare as fk browser with tons of issues with other sites. I see it all the time with websites breaking when using anything but chrome.

[@花XOI]

​@@balsalmalberto8086 as long as monopoly is being attempted to break it's alright if sites won't function from the get-go.

[@envynoir]

Yeah.. Creating a browser is hard.. I don't think this will come out for a while.

[@DipJyotiDeka]

I hope they keep the options for development of extensions.

[@im_sreyas]

I’ve been using Zen for the past two weeks, and it’s a great experience!🎉

[@SavvyNik]

love to hear it

[@Cool-Game-Dev]

Me as well for about a week, feels great to use

[@blablablablablabla-x9f]

same i didnt even know it was still in alpha??

[@PenguinBoi27]

Same

[@anonytuser711]

Chromium is a monopoly and Mozilla is good at stepping on rakes. I'm glad to see there is an independent choice with Zen browser. I am really excited for this project.

[@Anonymous-e7t3w]

It's a fork; it's dependent

[@Br1cht]

@@Anonymous-e7t3wit’s spelled “förk”

[@aamia2710]

@@Anonymous-e7t3w for now yes but because firefox is open and already very polished, if mozilla were to become google overnight zen could still survive

[@The8merp]

If you want truly independent browser that isn't a fork of Chromium or Firefox's web engine then you will have to wait for Ladybird browser to come out, the only other browser engine left on the market is Apple's Safari webkit, which not many outside of Apple owners use. Firefox sadly has been bleeding users for a long time and can't seem to get it's shit together, so seeing good forks like Zen makes me happy as they might keep Mozilla and it's aindependant broser engine alive by extension

[@an93lofdeath]

I've been using edge and zen. I have also been using tabs on the left for a very long time now so that aspect is no issue. I am liking zen so far, no issues as of yet.

[@The8merp]

I tried Edge recently and it has surprizingly good tab mangement and quite a bit of polish for a Microsoft product, if I didn't have a vested interest in avoiding Chromium based browsers I could see myself using it as a main browser

[@mirzaangon]

I've been using it for a while on my MacBook. Haven't found any bugs, aside from very trivial ones, most of which are already gone by now. It has been a great and fast experience.

[@ეროვნებითქართველი]

Using for some time now, no issues, great experience!

[@adam-u5i6c]

Salami dzma😂

[@qwerty_ra_ungamma]

does it have ad blocker ??

[@ReheatedDonut]

Moved from Vivaldi to Brave, and then to Zen a few months ago. Came across 1 bug about a month ago, and it was fixed in an update. Haven't had any other problems since.

[@s4yto]

been using both brave and zen, i like having one chromium and one firefox browser

[@Aves_1]

For me im sticking on vivaldi. Love how flexible it is

[@VortexFlickens]

@@Aves_1 Vivaldi was one of the best but recently there has been lot of crashes

[@iitzbenji8425]

been using it for a bit, using it along hyprland on Arch with an ultrawide and did some binding to help - Alt + A toggles sidebar and searchbar, to 'fullscreen' - Alt + X splits screen in 2 for side by side views - Alt + Z splits screen horizontally for top and bottom

[@Melechtna]

Yes, taking MORE space for the tabs, brilliant.

[@Redyf]

This is by far the best browser I've used, personally I'm a huge fan of firefox and have been using it for over 12 years already, so the fact zen is a firefox fork played a huge role into making me switch.

[@Techonsapevole]

Zen is great for containers and workspaces features

[@raughboy188]

I've been using zen since i switched to linux and it's great. Zern has one cool feature that no other browser has. You can have for example 50 tabs open but zen won't slow down, how is it possible? If you installed optimized version it has by defult turn on feature that after some time offloads tabs from memory, you'll see all tabs still opened but they're greyed out because they're not in memory but if you open any inactive tab it will open normaly. I can tell you that zen so far outperforms even brave browser but it takse bit of time for for users to get used to vertical tabs. Next year zen will have first full release.

[@barry5]

The marvelous suspender or new tab suspender extensions both do the same thing fyi, so its not exactly unique to zen browser.

[@raughboy188]

@barry5 still you have to admit that it reduces amount of ram browser needs drasticaly and helps with performance.

[@ThePC007]

Brave and Orion do the same thing. It's not really unique, but it is nice.

[@Ryan-ct3rv]

​@@barry5it's not unique, but it's a feature that other browsers have and should have already been built into firefox by now, so it's good to see it here.

[@nahidahmed9153]

​@@Ryan-ct3rv are u that stupid? so what zen did is integrated an extension & now zen bowser is unique?? other browser can do the same thing but why do that already exist via an installation of an extension ? in my opinion its stupid to call that a feature as it is

[@dualfade8004]

really dig the everything out of your way. Very smooth so far. oh and the internal tiling is great. Works frigging mint on spectrwm.

[@fluoriteByte]

Zen has had some ups and down in the UX design but recently the UI started stabilizing over the weeks and now its pretty good

[@daniilzavadin5076]

I been using Zen for months now. Amazing project!

[@qwerty_ra_ungamma]

does it have ad blocker ??

[@daniilzavadin5076]

@ its basically Firefox, uBlock Origin works just fine with it. Maybe they have s built-in one, but I don’t know - I don’t use it

[@irrelevoice]

​@@qwerty_ra_ungammaJust get ublock origin, nothing will beat it

[@crushfire2004]

For me the killer feature is glance, migrated from Mac + Arc Browser to Linux + Zen feel complete

[@dav21._]

Ive been using zen since a month, and i love it!!!

[@qwerty_ra_ungamma]

does it have ad blocker ??

[@avgvstvs96]

tried zen a month ago, I was annoyed to find no keyboard shortcuts for splitting tabs, and most surprisingly - no grouping of splits! Hopefully this is fixed by now..

[@bu5hm45t3r]

Zen became my go to, better optimozed than ff, ff loads slow on my high end computer and the workspaces feature in Zen made me switch to it, and many more!

[@Trucker_Chris02]

I've been using Zen for a while now, it is my default browser on Linux now!

[@VallThyo]

looks interesting, but the UI seems silly to me, I might give it a go when they allow horizontal tabs since we have more horizontal space on monitors than vertical, making vertical tabs only is incredibly silly to me personally

[@Hugowertop]

been using zen for quite a few weeks now, i love it, but there are bugs and some get quite annoying but i am enjoying the experience as my main browser

[@denizkendirci]

i like synchronizing workspaces with their open tab contents across all devices, that's why i am currently on the edge (pun intended).

[@tabkg5802]

Zen was amazing so far. Very few problems arose due to chrome bias websites seemingly have, but otherwise it's head and shoulders above other browsers I used

[@RenderingUser]

Can i get scroll bars on the edge for this browser? It always seems to have a margin

[@KatSoEpic]

Been using zen since shortly after it launched, came from Arc so it wasn't a hard transition, I've been loving it. I really like how the workspaces work, only gripe right now is that they changed control click from opening a link in a new tab to opening it in a popup view and I'm sure it's something I can change but it's still pretty annoying.

[@deckyfx2188]

it seems a new "Best" browser is released every hour. And mostly just custom pre-configured Chrome/Firefox forks, with vertical tabs setting. I'd say I will wait for them to use Diagonal tabs

[@burprobrox9134]

“Best” means “best at getting me youtube views”

[@NaokoMikuu]

I didn't even know it was an alpha as it is such a great experience already

[@NaokoMikuu]

Also the install method is perfect if you just get it from flathub

[@Midland_Wolf_71]

I dont get that second panel thing either. I've been trailling ZEN this week and really like it so far, it fits my use case perfectly for the most part. I filled it with my media players - YT, Spotify and misc Radio Stations, etc thinking I could drag it out of the way or send to back but NO, it simply obscures my content, makes ZERO sense unless I'm missing something. That aside, I'm concerned that my 5 tiled tabs (3/4 set to auto refresh during trading hours is drinking almost 10Gb of RAM at times.... thats mental and kinda worrying.

[@Shaxeal]

Should of showed the privacy and security settings, that's the main thing people wanna know about.

[@dcldr]

Using zen cause of compact mode. I like when page content takes whole screen and tabs/urlbar hidden until you need it and it takes only one mouse movement to show it

[@morgan24TH]

Now how do I get a start icon? I'm stuck

[@RuneWOlsen]

Problem with the Zen browser is that you get blurry text when the window is maximized on a super ultrawide monitor 😢.

[@The8merp]

I have been trying to find a video that showcases the Zen specific new features like tab splitting, workspaces etc. but seems like most YT people are just convering the basics and doing a review

[@Aves_1]

Glad to see more non-chromium browsers

[@shibuya3937]

moving from Arc to Zen

[@capitanDakkar]

the vertical tab seems interesting, however i'm not sure about downloading a new browser just because of that... Isn't there a way to use vertical tabs in firefox? Perhaps an extensions that changes the layout?

[@def2412]

Tree style tabs, perhaps?

[@TrustJesusToday]

I have been Zen for a couple of months. It's a good experience. The vertical tabs is a plus. Theming is easy. Zen mods are good. I am using 1.0.1.a.17-1 (in cachyos repo) and not clear if this is still considered alpha. Zen worked great as an alpha too.

[@turanamo]

If it's based on Firefox, does it still have the annoying scrolling or stacked tabs that require us to adjust the max tab size?

[@blackstar_1069]

Everyday dat passes and mozzzzilla ruins itself this browser gets more and more relevant

[@comosaycomosah]

hows it do in ram usage? i need to check ladybirds ram usage too..been using brave for ages too and happy with it functionality and usage and look and stuff but it does use like too much resources for my specific situation really

[@commander3494]

It's Firefox based. Sometimes it uses more, sometimes it uses less, depends on the website or how your computer feels, much like all other browsers.

[@SavvyNik]

Very much the same thought as the previous commenter. The one nice feature is it can put your tabs into a ‘sleep’ state that allows it to deallocate RAM and move it over to storage until you start using the tab again. Definitely a neat idea

[@comosaycomosah]

@@SavvyNik yea I feel like brave is lacking in that department. Alot of cool new features in arc and zen and lady bird I'd like to have in brave. I may checkout the nightly version actually and see what all it has

[@Mint25pop]

I am a tab hoarder, zen allows for the ultimate tab hoarding fully fueling my tab addiction, no competition.

[@SavvyNik]

For some extra RAM haha??

[@Mint25pop]

@SavvyNik being serious Zen just has all the features I liked in Vivaldi just in Firefox! All the features I used work as expected! Being in alpha it does have issues, the performance might tank in very long sessions but I usually close and reopen any browser a lot just to put tabs to sleep.

[@TheGeoY]

I love the layout.

[@burprobrox9134]

What’s the pros over waterfox?

[@Salvage-Cloak-Alias12]

With vertical tab support on Firefox being not great at best, Zen has been amazing for my browser preferences. I do wish it followed system color scheme, but it does all I ask for in a browser, and nothing more.

[@sca2511]

Vertical tabs are native on Firefox. It's a setting in about:config, search for "sidebar". It doesn't have tree tabs, unfortunately.

[@noahwaaga5079]

As long as the about pages are the same (about:config etc) ill try it

[@TiagoRuivo]

Its just FF with a sidebar...

[@raynoldchow]

Maybe TBCNY should have chosen Firefox instead of Chromium. For me, even if Arc is performant, I still prefer open-source alternatives like Zen. I feel like TBC seemed to abandon charging for Arc as there are alternatives.

[@hn9174]

any website where you can search a large amount of information is technical a search engine

[@trekscape8550]

It seems promising in some ways, but for me no horizontal tabs are a dealbreaker - sorry for the time being.

[@rchltmedia]

i wish there is packaged version for debian/ubuntu and DNF.

[@andrewscaccetti6464]

As of now, workspaces sync but not tabs but as soon as pinned and 'essential' tabs start syncing, I can finally ditch arc! I really hate how the workflow of arc ruined other browsers for me. Unfortunately its got the standard firefox downsides but I've mitigated the worst of it by using Brave for PWAs and installing the PWA for media sites like youtube.

[@haiffy]

I open 1 tab in zen and it's already using 1gb of ram, sticking with arc for now

[@Ayush-hb9bx]

So they're using Firefox instead of Chromium and basically copying Arc

[@etterathe]

Just a custom css firefox with some tweaks to cheat certain performance tests. Can't tell where the hype comes from, but it will definietely not catch chromium browsers in terms of performance.

[@axandraalex5869]

I have 7 tabs open and zen already consumes 2GB of my ram. Other browser i use like floorp, edge, etc would only use 700MB-1.2GB. My biggest gripe with zen browser currently

[@raimg1816]

Zen use lot of stuff from floorp bit different themed. So its fork of fork i guess. Dont see why we need floorp version 2.0

[@firestormjupiter]

It’s actually based on betterfox

[@commander3494]

Because floorp breaks in a new way every other day and is made by a rather suspicious sounding company imo. I switched as soon as I found out about Zen, it's just better in every way.

[@sca2511]

Plus Floorp is based on ESR (until the next major release). Zen is based on the latest stable.

[@nosotrosloslobosestamosreg4115]

Brave and librewolf browders. Zen was a meh experience.

[@SavvyNik]

thanks for sharing the exp

[@skaruts]

I can't comprehend why browsers haven't already had vertical tabs for decades. It seems like such a no-brainer to me. For anyone who tends to open too many tabs it's just so much easier to manage them and to keep the amount of open tabs under control. I've been using Vivaldi because of that, and I may try Zen at some point because of that. (I tried vertical tab extensions for FF and Chrome, but they're all pretty bad. They either take too much space, or are bloated with features I couldn't care less about, or have crappy right-click menus, or they have the tabs themselves too big and bulky, etc. Best one I tried was Sideberry for FF, but it was still bloated, and it kept crashing FF on me. A list of tabs with basic grouping is all I need...)

[@burprobrox9134]

Cus they suck

[@ThePowerRanger]

I use it and it's pretty good, has some bugs nothng major tho. Really love the mods and themeing. Also Glance is really nice.

[@anonytuser711]

Most people only care if it loads Gmail and KZbin for functionality. :)

[@silak33]

The only thing I don't like about Zen is that there are quite a few things that I can't quite do yet without using my mouse ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[@siuksliukaralius7029]

Time will tell. Not the first nor the last time this has been said.

[@ZaberfangX]

I try it, I did like it, I just can't use to the tabs on the sides

[@SavvyNik]

Yeah it definitely takes some time

[@v0ldy54]

I used to hate vertical tabs, but Zen has the optionj to automatically collapse the tab menu when you're not using them, so they take very little space on screen yet remain perfectly readable as soon as you hover your mouse on them

[@ZaberfangX]

@@v0ldy54 I try it over a month I'm so use to having the tabs on top, it was hard to get use to the side, but floorp had both side and top or have one or the other, I think zen should do the same but it's up to them.

[@marcandruu]

At least i don't have to make an account to use it lol

[@jamesprice4074]

Sounds alot like LibreWolf.

[@Heldn100]

I use it more than 4 months but I'm maybe go back to chrome sadly

[@potatocrispychip]

Google: 50B$ per year.

[@DizY_8]

Zen just feels like worse Floorp... Lots of weird design choices, like why can't I reorder workspaces?

[@theshowmanuk]

Looks good !

[@crackedfrost]

Oh here we go again. How long until furry porn malware is discovered in the source code this time?

[@MaskaOffi]

look like Arc

[@grandasperj]

I don't really see the point, for now. Maybe it's going to get more interesting later but right now i can just use floorp with some customization to get most of the features zen has. But if it can make opera users stop using that chinese spyware that is opera, i'm all for it.

[@zSion]

Floorp is nowhere near as good as Zen..plus, it's called floorp..

[@KarolisZvirgzdas]

I'm not a fan of Zen's layout .Brave still at the top for me, and its not even close

[@UncleSpellbinder]

I cannot use a browser with side tabs. Tried it, HATE IT.

[@MrGrappleMan]

You can collapse it. Moreover you can view more tabs and understand tab names better. It is just more efficient. You will take time to get used to it.

[@RushiRajnoor-u5e]

no drm content

[@MrAlanCristhian]

I like the fact that is a fork, and also, a fork of Firefox. I so tired of developers starting from scratch.

[@77wolfblade]

The only one I know that's starting from scratch. is ladybird.

[@MrAlanCristhian]

@@77wolfblade yes, I mean in general speaking.

[@PyVerse-47]

firefox will die probably with mozilla controlling it i prefer brave for now until ladybird becomes a thing

[@joaopauloalbq]

The window buttons are so wrong

[@nun6661]

make this trash run netflix or any streaming in 1080p like edge, what's the point of making another generic sht like everyone else but with just a tweaks ui and blablabla, make something better or just don't do anything, looks like no one can do anything actually good bc everyone is poor and incompetent

[@ultravioletiris6241]

Dang bro

[@nun6661]

i was mad about something else lol sorry to all parties involved

[@cosmicusstardust3300]

oh great another firefox clone, I'll pass

[@rimenahi]

Not intuitive to navigate.