Zen Browser First Look

[@TheLinuxCast]

You can support the channel and get great merch by checking out my shop: shop.thelinuxcast.org

[@NreKonkoro-vt2fo]

Zen just came out a month ago! for privacy, you'll notice there are four prefs.js which are a custom betterfox configuration. Zen's gonna use uBO for content blocking with a custom UI. My main ick with Zen is that it removes/lacks the traditional browser functionality of File, Edit, View, Bookmarks, Help and that renders it's PDF reader almost completely useless and the whole browser unfit and unusable for opening local html and document files. Thanks for giving Zen the spotlight it's been waiting for since a month ago!!!

[@TheLinuxCast]

@@NreKonkoro-vt2fo that's impressive

[@jimmyorgenkaccrow4961]

@@TheLinuxCast is there a built-in adblock?

[@TheLinuxCast]

@@jimmyorgenkaccrow4961 no. Not afaik.

[@marko19914]

Zen browser is roughly 1.5 months old. Just for reference. It is officially still in alpha.

[@xperience-evolution]

Hmm, when you search it on KZbin there is a 8 year old video about the Zen Browser App

[@lussor1]

No way its from july and already 6k stars when floorp only 5k

[@claybford]

Matt doesn't review alpha software though 👀

[@aryanjohnsharma]

@@lussor1 I've been using Floorp, Nicer..

[@prime12602]

@@lussor113k now lol

[@anonymouscommentator]

this looks highly promising! also the fact that they chose firefox instead of a chromium as a base is such a massive advantage to me. id love to see where this is going! also i heard firefox themselves announced they will be working on vertical tabs so that will be interesting to keep an eye on.

[@itsluisman7874]

Bro you really? Vertical tabs firefox working this is propably joke

[@syedumairali4345]

Thanks for checking it out.

[@nikkehtine]

Absolute golden find. I like Vivaldi and Arc but also prefer Firefox so this one really hits close to home for me. Impressive what they had already managed to achieve so far, looks great, love the vertical tabs and compact mode, can't wait for tab groups

[@Just_Areki]

Floorp looks bloated for me. Zen, on the other hand, doesn't. It looks interesting, I definitely will try it out

[@cahva2]

Im a Floorp user and it really "feels" bloated. I just installed Zen and it feels way snappier! Hopefully this project gets ❤ 😂

[@dozieweon]

Started using it today! I love it

[@anon_y_mousse]

I'm glad that it's based on Firefox. I wish we had more than two mainstream browsers, but as long as it's not based on Chromium we're better off. I hate phrasing it this way, but we need more diversity in the browser space.

[@RazoBeckett.]

So its foss Arc browser .

[@LovecraftianGodsKiller]

Yeah, pretty much. Or in other words: Arc Browser but it's actually good.

[@DenCato]

@@LovecraftianGodsKiller Does it support the multiple profiles in one window as Arc though?

[@LovecraftianGodsKiller]

@@DenCato No. But it's 100% better that way. Using the multiple profiles in the same window just sounds confusing AF.

[@DenCato]

@@LovecraftianGodsKiller I use quite a lot of profiles at work (different cloud management account) and that's exactly why I started using Arc. Much easier to manage!

[@simquinoa2030]

@@LovecraftianGodsKilleryou aren’t using multiple profiles in arc. It switches your profile and saves your session for your other profile in the background

[@bhthllj]

This video was very helpful! You elaborate on exactly the features I am interested in as a user.

[@1amy0u1amy0u]

You did a fairly in-depth review but keep in mind that it's around for 1 to 2 months and still in Alpha build and getting updated regularly.

[@niceEli]

As someone who uses Firefox. I switched and had everything setup in 10 mins

[@anishkn04]

You can un-split the tabs! Click on the 🔗 in the address bar and you will find the option there.

[@TheLinuxCast]

Yeah I never looked there, I expected it to be in the menu

[@echobucket]

The big think I'd like to see in Zen is the feature ARC has, it basically merges the idea of tabs and bookmarks. You can sort of "pin" tabs and they sort of remain in the sidebar and take the place of bookmarks.

[@rediffusion7996]

I like that it fast and how it can switch between Profiles

[@diszydreams]

Wow, the first ~1 m 20 sec: you described almost to the word how I use Vivaldi. Thanks for the good content u put out!

[@UltimatePerfection]

I am tab hoarder too and that's why I don't use anything based on Chromium, because the tabs after certain point become so thin that you can't even see favicons anymore (you can see this too, just open any chromium-like and start opening links with middle mouse button until you can't see favicons anymore). In Firefox tabs just scroll if there are more than can fit on screen.

[@marklants5863]

I agree with most of everything you stated. One important point you left out is that all Firefox add-ins work. The most important is Multi-account-containers for cookie isolation.

[@plinkplinkfizz]

firefox married split tabs .... made in heaven 😍

[@sohamkarandikar6726]

TLDR, Arc but based on Firefox.

[@eyesight2073]

13:43 Moving Tab Bar to right side is possible. "Right click" on empty space in the Tab Bar >> and there is a check box for it.

[@lucolesco]

wow i've never heard about that one before. Im gonna check that out

[@relaxdmj8769]

Zen is my main now!

[@rocvan8190]

Sounds interesting. I'll check ir out.

[@djyotta]

It's interesting that you feel horizontal tabs are better for lots of tabs... I recently switched to vertical tabs (I prefer horizontal) only because of excessive tab usage that is part of my day to day work (I don't do it at home). This is the only way I can switch context reliably at work without losing my place. I noticed with horizontal tabs, around 20 tabs it's just icons. Where as with vertical tabs (expanded) I have enough text to see the title no matter how many as the list scrolls. I feel scrolling is OK for my workflow hence the vertical tabs. Horizontal scrolling has always felt wrong to me. Multiple horizontal tab rows has never worked for me either (usually the focused row keeps moving to the bottom which I hate). So yeah, I could never get horizontal tabs to work for me with multiple tabs. I even used "Install as app" feature to at least group tabs from same app together and use the OS task switcher instead. But find that a lot of PWA don't open new windows/tabs in same window group so that doesn't help either. "Install as app" is only good for (truly) single page app.

[@Flackon]

I'm also a tab hoarder. I feel that after the tab bar gets too populated, I just go to the firefox tab menu, as it's basically a vertical list. I'm curious about vertical tabs though maybe I should try them.

[@rikhardfsoss]

you guys need Firefox's Tab Stash

[@nikkehtine]

weird, Plasma is supposed to be faster than Xfce

[@djyotta]

@@Flackon main issue I'm having with vertical tabs is some apps claim a lot of space horizontally (menu bars etc.) So with the vertical tab columnt, then the navigation column, then the file listing column (GitLab), it all takes up a lot of space and not much room to see the code. So I guess even in 2024 you still want to keep your max line length to 79 chars

[@Winnetou17]

As a tab hoarder myself, let me tell you that in Firefox you can set a minimum width per tab (and I think it has it set by default). And if the top (tab) bar is full, IT CAN BE SCROLLED! Mind blowing, I know. On the Chromium side, yeah, they have this stupid stupid mentality to show all of them at once, so after a while you can't even see the icon anymore, it's just a triangle. Though I guess there's extensions for that. Or maybe it has a minimum tab config too, I don't know, I haven't needed it in several years.

[@nelduarte311]

Thank you for this video.

[@spacetrucker918]

I am very impressed with this browser. My default browser on macOS was Orion, but now it's Zen.

[@Leahi84]

This looks great. I've been looking for something to switch to to get away from Chromium based browsers due to the coming banning of ad blockers, but wasn't happy with Firefox.

[@MarioBasic]

This might be my next browser, but in its current state it crashes a lot for me. Will try it again when it goes stable. Thank you for discovering this browser to me

[@lussor1]

Like what

[@MarioBasic]

@@lussor1 can't pin point it exactly, but while browsing the web as I usually do, the browser just closes at random times. I haven't looked in the logs, but after 3 crashes in 3 minutes it seemed clear that it is unstable

[@glebglub]

8:47 I think you meant to say "a double barrel shotgun" instead of "double-edged sword" - the double edge sword is usually seen as a bad thing as when you swing back you might cut your own head/arm off, but the double barrelled shotgun lets you use one barrel, the other barrel, or both at the same time. 8^B

[@92redferrari]

Thanks for looking into this for us 😊

[@SophiaWoessner]

Tab-hoarder who uses vertical tabs, because horizontal tabs werent good enough

[@RenderingUser]

Same. I use vertical tabs on Firefox. I have over 1800

[@SophiaWoessner]

@@RenderingUser so much ram..

[@RenderingUser]

@@SophiaWoessner nah. Most of the tabs aren't loaded in. They just.... Exist.... In the void

[@SophiaWoessner]

@@RenderingUser void tabs, spooky

[@kebabulon]

@@RenderingUser WTF

[@azidoazide7039]

After discovering containerized tabs in firefox i dont think ill ever be able to go to chromium based because they dont have an equivalent. Ive just moved from mercury to floorp gonna see what all the hype is about. Honestly this one looks great to me too. As someone who uses Vimium C being able to hide everything actually sounds really cool.

[@phoneywheeze]

@@azidoazide7039 aren't profiles similar to containerised tabs? I dislike containerised tabs because they require syncing and that means the tab data is stored somewhere

[@souviksaha5416]

what are containerized tabs?

[@John7No]

@@phoneywheeze containerized tabs can exist in the same profile. In order to sync different profiles you need different/multiple accounts. Also containerized tabs do not sync data, not sure how you came to the conclusion. The name of the containers sync etc, but not any data from sites you visit

[@azidoazide7039]

@@souviksaha5416 you can assign certain websites to containers and each container can only see data from that container. So you can shove all of your Google stuff into one container so that Google can't get any of your other browser data. It's a great privacy feature. It also pairs well with tab groups.

[@SilverSeleucid]

@@souviksaha5416 exactly what it sounds like, tabs in specific containers with specific security parameters

[@saltyabcdef3202]

Zen seems good so far but the UI only seems usable with dark themes. Like it alot better than ARC.

[@ajdink.]

my new fav browser

[@YourComputer]

Oh, wow, been looking for something like this.

[@ryanbrady5968]

are the workspaces in Zen "containerized" like when using the multi-account containers extension in firefox? if the zen workspaces have that feature "built-in" then i'm really interested. containerized workspaces is something i want in vivaldi.

[@Prophet6000]

I finally joined the Vivaldi train. It is pretty good.

[@TheTastefulThickness]

Changing the icons for your own custom ones really modernizes the look of Vivaldi.

[@andril]

i woke up thinking about something like this - thank you

[@darwinjackson3560]

I'm giving it a try, it honestly looks good

[@H-xt8io]

at 9:42 you mention you can't unsplit the tabs without closing one of them, but you can enable this in settings by going to Keyboard Shortcuts and using the shortcut under Close Split View

[@eyesight2073]

6:56 Ctrl + Shift + E cycles through workspaces

[@tandeepdas9211]

I am actually using it for like 4 days. The experience was good but the thing is that it started to become slow. Like when I was scrolling, while opening 8-10 tabs, including KZbin playing music in the background.

[@Yawne.]

is it better than arc?

[@lolopenalta8329]

You can unsplit tabs by clicking on the middle icon in the address bar.

[@masashiyeo]

Just switched over to Zen and loving it so far, sick of using Chrome..

[@V17_h21]

Thank you for the vid, appeciated as someone who uses vivaldi for the same reasons as you

[@MrwhoHQ]

5:25 next to right-left icon button there is a book icon it might work you can check

[@ped-away-g1396]

afaik, only vivaldi has the sidebar done right (which is one of the reasons i'm still using vivaldi to this day).

[@Skelterbane69]

Fellow 1000+ open tabs people, where y'all at?

[@crossbowbeat]

Take care!

[@bensouthall2612]

Tab hoarding is relatable. I can't do what I need to do with fewer than 100 browser windoiws. If firefox crashes, or worse and more likely, doesn't start up with the last known state, I lose everything.

[@Xeab]

I've been using firefox with an extension called sideberry to provide workspaces and grouping by way of a tree (which is something I wished I had in Vivaldi - tab group in tab group) This plus some custom CSS to hide to top tab bar and the sidebar's header. And some CSS to keep the sidebar an icon wide and to expand on hover kinda like Arc browser. This has been my ideal workflow for a good bit after leaving Vivaldi for being far too sluggish. It hasn't been perfect but has still been very productive. I hope Zen can be this for me

[@CristianCYAC]

Thanks I think I will love this one. Floorp was not good at all. I like Min , Thorium and Brave, but looking for a Firefox based option. I tried Mercury and Floorp.

[@Linkman8912]

I love floorp, it's just better firefox as far as I can tell

[@averysnacks420]

@@Linkman8912 switched to floorp 2 weeks ago and I feel content.

[@askeladden450]

​@@Linkman8912it wasnt polished the last time i checked it a year ago, and on windows, it was consuming too much ram. Loved the customization though.

[@razorclarencecallahan950]

@@askeladden450 yeah, it was using ESR version of Firefox, that's pretty much why. They moved to the latest ESR 128 and it's way better now. A few months later, they'll move to the "Stable" release cycle of Firefox along with a change in the codebase so overall it will be a lot faster and better.

[@NreKonkoro-vt2fo]

@@Linkman8912 It sounds awful, it looks awful; just an underwhelming experience for a Vivaldian. I use Vivaldi which is a great name while listening to La Follia and Four Seasons by Antonio Lucio VIVALDI. That's how cool Vivaldi is. Floorp should just rename to Ablaze or Nonareko browser and get the overall look and feel cohesive smooth and consistent. Floorp has a thin address bar while having fat tabs and sidebar and man do I NOT want to talk about its status bar. while Vivaldi's toolbars are of the same size. So that coupled with how Vivaldi's theming system is more consistent than Firefox's. Floorp feels like someone bundled extensions rather than actually add the features (well, the workspaces aren't that bad but overall UX matters so...).

[@luxluth]

What a good looking browser

[@thelimatheou]

The one thing that keeps me on qutebrowser is (as far as I am aware) the inability for any other browser, either natively or with an extension by vimkeys, to allow vertical scrolling with a keybind only through the address bar history. I have been using qute so long I am used to its shortcomings...but would switch if I could have a completely mouse-less experience on a browser that has a wider extension ecosystem. I'll give zen a drive - see how it goes for me.

[@twb0109]

Vieb is great, no extensions though

[@thelimatheou]

@@twb0109 I'll check Vieb out, thanks. Looks to be lacking compared with qutebrowser as there is no (?) ability to run scripts with greasemonkey or some other loader. The nice thing about qb is that it has all the Vim bindings by default (I've added emacs as well where it makes sense for me), but you can also trigger scripts to run password managers such as Bitwarden via rofi/dmenu. At a glance, it looks like Vieb has window splitting which qb doesn't.

[@renealbrechtsen9743]

There are keybindings in the browser, and you can get out of split view (without closing a tab) by hitting ctrl+alt+u.

[@SitWithAnkit]

This looks much better than Floorp browser.

[@KushalAgarwal-n9r]

There's a theme store too for more features and customisability.

[@TheLinuxCast]

yeah, apparently my version was old.

[@Iam_Abdullah]

arc but firfox based

[@zSion]

arc but based*

[@Keizer_Soze]

9:49 - am i missing something or maybe not understanding? because the last option says "unsplit" ... so surely that would unsplit the tabs? 🤔

[@foss_sound]

I wish I can get rid of top and sidebar any time soon like in Arc browser. Because it's based on FF and not on Chromeium I'd be willed switch as soon itÄs implemented.

[@SoulExpension]

Ok, so based on Firefox means Spidermonkey. I was just thinking how badass would it be to switch between javascript engines. I'm betting no small feat, but this plus that plus a decent bookmark manager would put an end to having many browsers installed.

[@Priimerra]

Great video

[@kevinfox9535]

Edge browser have vertical tabs too and more user friendly

[@rediffusion7996]

It's not that good as Zen, bro

[@plutorocks1]

My only issue being I like having bookmarks having below the search bar and I seemed to can make it without it

[@Ghis1964s]

Been using "chromeless" firefox for over 10 years on windows (css hacks github etc). I had to mod the codes so these won't shift what I'm reading/watching (shifting hits my eyes like like a knock on the head with a shovel). Anything tabs/bars descends over the pages when hovered on (...so, this browser would have had a win if it had came out a few years back.) I tried to make it do the same under linux for years but never was able to until a few weeks ago. This was one of the main point that kept me away from switching to linux. The other main point that keeps my away from linux is the absence of a task-bar that I can move/drag on demand like on win7/winXP. But I'm getting there.... I'm making XFCE look 1000s times better than plasma, very easily btw, without all the slugged of plasma or gnome, without them bugs also ;)

[@aliyilmaz852]

would be interesting to see your xfce configuration. Anyway u can share it?

[@TActually]

The security settings seem to be pretty stock, with the exception of the telemetry features. Floorp takes it a bit farther. I think Zen is pretty cool, definitely cleaner, but I'm going to stick with Floorp.

[@Gaivs]

My biggest issue with Vivaldi is the chromium base, can't wait for Ladybird to get going! Firefox is slowly becoming unusable for me

[@ibrahimhussain3248]

You can press Ctrl+E to bring up the floating URL bar

[@ima_doggo_bork_bork6279]

Hey @thelinuxcast thanks for showing this! do you know can I get this on nix? I dont want to switch from nix

[@TheLinuxCast]

Yes, but you'll have to enable flatpak and flathub support

[@yurcchello]

is this browser forces you to create account like Arc?

[@aluisiofsjr]

No.

[@ppSnow]

The hide frame(tabs and url on hover) feature is the beautiful Too bad we don't have an standard for extensions and credentials, would let sync trough browsers easily, use chrome on phone, tor on PC with everything synced. I know. It can import, but everytime I update on chrome, need to update KeePass, edge, tor, etc. Is just dumb and annoying

[@ashish_prajapati_tr]

Hi , I tried and found the we can unsplit the tabs. This option to untoggle the split mode is available on the right side of the url bar where bookmark button is available.

[@chroncile]

What's your font setup like? It looks really nice.

[@TheLinuxCast]

I use Roboto.

[@MahdiImeni]

What's your desktop environment?

[@rwashi]

By the way Firefox does have VERTICAL Tabs.

[@Hellbending]

My brother - I am gonna let you in on something as a fellow Vivaldi enjoyer... That isn't a tab problem, now ME? I have a tab problem. Lemme go count these real quick- I currently have, at the time of writing this, 1601 tabs open, across a total of 16 workspaces + base (And another 40 or so in another window that will be closed next weekend after keyboard build is completed) Don't feel bad about 100~ I got you

[@TheLinuxCast]

You win. 😂

[@8BitCerberus]

Heh, I'm sitting on around 1500 on my work machine (using Firefox + Sideberry though, instead of Vivaldi), and about 30 panels (Sideberry lingo for Workspace). If Zen supports Firefox's Containerized Tabs (and subsequently the Multiaccount Containers extension) I'll be giving some serious thought to switching over. Vivaldi's out because A) Chromium, and B) no containerized tabs.

[@htx80nerd]

I've gone "tab-less". Everything gets a new window. Sick of tab hell and trying to track down tabs or leaving tabs open for a week and forgetting about it.

[@ArcticPrimal]

At this point, there are so many browsers with literally the same performance, features, and privacy focused that people just hype them up for no reason. Also, I think people who keep making these browsers use them as experience to beef up their resume for possible funding or work plus in the industry and luckily get that google default money if google appeal is successful. I salute them but not the fake hype, which also happens when a new distro comes out and it's literally the same as any linux distro but with different words/commands

[@Macj707]

What was your installation method?

[@asdion]

No chromium(inspired) browser has yet managed to create a proper vertical tab system, it's all just cheap and barely functioning copies of tree style tabs, because they are either unwilling or unable to get it proper functionality while having it properly integrated into the UI

[@vithorio]

Arc browser has a great vertical tab system, imo

[@DanielSRS]

This browser looks like a copy of Microsoft Edge (thats a good thing, in my opinion) but right now, vertical tabs without expanding on hover makes it impossible to use (at least for me) One of the reasons I use Edge is because is the only browser I know that has usable Vertical tabs and since I normally open hundreds of tabs is impossible to use them horizontally, the possibility to have an option in the near future is a huge plus. Looking forward to it. Also, as you said, workspaces changing order is terrible! the combo: tab groups + vertical tabs + workspaces is the basic for me and a browser without it is not an option, but it still seems a project that worth looking in the future.

[@willi1978]

i also found the edge vertical tabs the most pleasing. the zen browser is very close, hover to make them bigger doesn't work though. To Expand you have to click a button at the bottom of the bar

[@afjelidfjssaf]

@@DanielSRS BTW, the dev started working on expand on hover and will release it in the next version

[@espinita.]

I just want a Firefox based browser with touch screen support

[@rationallyright4626]

Does Zen have a Windows version? I'm saving up money to buy a new computer to start using linux, so im on windows for now.

[@TheLinuxCast]

@@rationallyright4626 yup. zen-browser.app/download

[@beefglobb]

Honestly I'm simple when it comes to browsers if I can open KZbin or Twitch without getting ads out of the box (so I don't gotta worry about whether or not ublock keeps gets supported or not) it's a good browser for me. I'm trying Brave rn but I'm not a fan of the weird AI and web3 shit in it.

[@Yes-me4pk]

5:55 for some reason I don't have this button within my Zen Browser, but I'd really like to have it, is there something I can do?

[@TheLinuxCast]

Should.be there by default. At least it was for me.

[@Yes-me4pk]

​@@TheLinuxCastweird, because no matter how many times I reinstall its not there. huh

[@Relics]

Floorp is an amazing name. WHAT DO YOU MEAN

[@rediffusion7996]

Yes, it's cool kinda

[@digojez]

@@rediffusion7996 it has a silly vibe for me, but the coolness of something is subjective ig.

[@edwardfletcher7790]

Tab Hoarders Unite 👍😁

[@MnemonicCarrier]

Does it use hardware acceleration for video playback?

[@dmiracle74]

The Firefox Android browser not good?? I use it all the time. I currently have 45 tabs open in mine. I also have the unblock origin add-on.

[@TheLinuxCast]

I'm on iOS so I don't get the fancy features

[@colyndev]

Has anyone reviewed profile management? Seems like it keeps getting skipped over. I tried managing multiple profiles but it was very buggy. Try deleting a profile. And what is the difference between profiles, workspaces, and accounts? Seems like it will turn into an inception nightmare.

[@tiagodev5838]

Thanks for the video! I tried the side panels with side tabs in Firefox Nightly but couldn't figure out how to then disable the top bar which looks awkward when the side tabs are enabled. I ended up going back to tabs on top! I also noticed that when I had vertical tabs on, I often struggled to find which tab was active.

[@JohnSmith-lc1ml]

What DE are you using?

[@Arcensyl-f6h]

In a reply to another comment, he mentioned that he is using KDE.

[@TheLinuxCast]

yup KDE

[@jakobw135]

Have you tried the THORIUM browser?

[@lazarminer]

Which distro and environment are you using on this video?

[@TheLinuxCast]

openSUSE and kde

[@lazarminer]

@@TheLinuxCast thanks setup looks awesome

[@DanielSRS]

I checked the Github repo and noticed a closed issue (29) to expand vertical tabs on hover. You used an older version (the issue was closed 3 weeks ago) or it still was not available to you?

[@Mwrp86]

Or he recorded it 3 weeks ago?

[@TheLinuxCast]

I used whatever version was on flathub a week ago

[@afjelidfjssaf]

version 24 will have expand on hover

[@CarlTheObeseCat]

Horizontal tabs are coming soon

[@SwanTube]

The Chromium part of Vivaldi is open source. Well, you can say the same about Google Chrome. That's just pure B.S from Vivaldi. Hope Zen Browser beats Vivaldi soon as it's already better than Arc.

[@agostinhomatos321]

I have been using Firefox for privacy reasons but I have to force myself from time to time to keep using it. It is a kind of "salad" with old and new code, millions of lines, written by many developers and put all that together. I don't consider it a reliable and stable software, when there are some tabs opened with intensive graphics, like youtube videos, it is "normal" firefox to crash and have to restart. Something really annoying. All this text to say that if zen browser is based on firefox code, it is to be expected to suffer from the same behavior.

[@luderx]

CTRL+ALT+U will unsplit :)