Ask HN: For those who use Chrome, why do you?

I've used every popular browser (chrome/edge/old edge/firefox/opera/brave/chromium/vivaldi) on Windows. Chrome works most smooth of the time without any funny issues.

Supposedly people said Edge is Chromium based, and is better, less memory usage, etc. I tried it, it just feels more clunky, takes longer to open, pages take longer to load. I also dislike the interface, chrome's interface seems more natural to me. And of course doesn't have the same extensions.

Firefox feels faster than chrome for certain sites, but I find it has issues with other sites. Might be because sites design for Chrome these days. Also Firefox like the original Netscape has random freezes and bugs. A lot less, but I find chrome just works most of the time with less problems.

An example site I can think of, off the top of my head, youtube works way smoother in chrome than firefox. I'm not a huge youtube fan but lately I've been trying to view content that happens to be only available on youtube. Opera has even worse youtube support.

I can't remember why I stopped using Chromium but I think it was a lack of extension support. I recalled it lacked something Chrome had that was important to me. If it's important to you, I can use it again so I can remind myself what it was.

For the record I do use Firefox as my backup browser, and I would say it's better than Chrome at some things (it loads certain sites faster, and has better extension support), and better privacy options, but overall Chrome works better for every site.

* Switched a couple of years ago from Firefox because of better dev tools.

* GPU acceleration doesn't work properly with Firefox/Linux (Dell G5 SE, Ryzen 4800H). Some sites I use daily, such as Google Maps, are painfully slow/laggy on Firefox.

* There's something about the Firefox's scrolling behaviour that I find really annoying.

* It works well across all platforms (Firefox on Android wasn't great last time I checked).

* It's the most tested browser. Many websites don't bother to test with Firefox.

* Chrome has the richest extension ecosystem.

* Some of the alternatives, such as Brave are not as trustworthy. Security is a bigger concern than privacy for me. Google has one of the best security track records.

* I'm heavily invested in the Google ecosystem, and I use dozens of their products. There's always a switching cost involved. Just changing the browser has a negligable effect on privacy if I'm constantly using the other Google services.

* Personally had overall an overwhelmingly positive experience over the last 15+ years I've been in the Google ecosystem. Google hasn't done anything to betray my trust so far.

Chrome dev tools are great. Or maybe I'm just use to them by this point.

Chrome also just by far has the best compatibility throughout the web. Whenever I try going to another browser, I always keep a copy of Chrome just so that I can pay utilities (because, of course, their site is broken on Safari, for example).

Also, I use all three major desktop OSes, and Chrome has been the most consistent throughout all 3. Firefox use to have serious rendering issues on macOS; I believe they may have been fixed but I can't be arsed to keep track of that.

This subject has gotten extremely political and I simply don’t trust most of what’s posted on Hacker News. Everything looks like motivated reasoning to me. Only a small minority really understand the issues and they use motivated reasoning too.

It’s much like deciding which nutritional studies to trust when most people aren’t scientists and are just reposting memes.

And although I don’t know what’s going on anymore, I have residual trust in the Chrome team since I used to work for Google.

Mainly because it's look and feel. I'm not a "power user". Chrome just looks lightweight and feels fast. The only browser that is similar in these aspects is Safari.

Firefox looks bad. For example:

- the spacing between the home button and the search bar

- why there's a line at the top of the current tab? The way Chrome distinguishes the current tab looks "better""

- the "back", "forward" and "refresh" buttons look big

Fast, stable, feature-rich, well tested, excellent security, continuously updated, first-rate support on all websites, cross-platform continuity, best extension ecosystem, excellent developer tools, easy to run different channels (e.g. stable and canary) simultaneously. I would use it on mobile if it supported extensions.

Because if feels faster.

I open a lot of tabs and keep my browser open for days. After a while, Firefox becomes slow, while Chromium always feels fast. It's hard to measure, but it's real. In addition, sometimes I encounter sites that do not work or are slower in Firefox (I don't have an example in my mind right now).

Also, more than once, I see that something is not supported/slower in Firefox just because of some unresolved bugs. They get fixed after a while, but that makes Chrome always ahead and ready when you need a specific feature right away. See for example:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26189604 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25916574 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24801058 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23690908 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22943131 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24896489

I try to use Firefox (I do) but there are still issues every now and then and I find that I have to use Chrome for something at least once a day.

Most developers develop for Chrome and don't even consider Firefox.

I'm not particularly fond of Google (and growing less fond by-the-week) but the best I can do for now is use Firefox for 95% of things and keep Chrome around for the rest.

I won't make a blog-post detailing things, since you could just as well google your way into those details. Instead I'll note down:

- Best devtools, particularity regarding how the tools feel to browse around in.

- Feels slightly better to browse with. Only small differences, like how scroll is just a bit "smooth".

- Looks better ui-wise. (arguably a personal take, but also arguably not)

- (as others will note) Because it's essentially standard at this point, and I work with webdev.

I use chromium though, at least it makes things less google-y. And I thoroughly dislike the Alphabet-monopoly situation and all the bad things it brings. I really wish browsers were far less centralized than they are right now, and that some kind of web-standards consortium worked better than it does. But I don't pretend to be able to fix things like that right now. Besides, at this point, the whole Alphabet-monopoly situation is arguably a political issue rather than a technical one. (Political issues require political solutions)

Why did I start? Performance and dev tools. But that was a long time ago. Being technically competent doesn't mean you keep up to date on how all the major options for all major categories of software compare on all major features. Maybe Firefox is better on both counts now.

Why don't I switch? I haven't seen anything about Chrome re. privacy that has really bothered me personally, but I'm also the guy who clicks accept on cookie prompts. More immediately, I'm kept on Chrome by the Google ecosystem and not wanting to configure+migrate with something new.

One reason is that chrome vulnerabilities are between 3 and 5 times more expensive. And thus, I would guess, more rare.

Sources: https://www.zerodium.com/program.html

https://www.zerodayinitiative.com/blog/2021/1/25/announcing-...

Late to this but: I still use Chromium (and Iridium, a derivative that hopefully doesn't send info to Google), specifically on OpenBSD, for reasons summarized here (lower chance of privilege escalation, limiting bad behavior, easier to configure and quickly change javascript/images/cookies behavior generally and per-site): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21566041 (...and discussed further in the parents of the above link, like: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21559122 or the full recent related discussion here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21557309 ).

Given which, I might have switched to Firefox for some uses after a recent OpenBSD release where I think it got the pledlge/unveil support (preventing it from accessing the computer beyond config-specified limits), except for the JS/cookies/images config stuff (and that I got the impression the pledge/unveil stuff might be less useful in a less-well-organized code base...?).

One thing I wish I knew about firefox is a way, without extensions/add-ons, to limit which sites can use javascript/images/etc., and/or to open multiple config tabs at once to quickly turn those on by exception for occasional specific sites, as I do with chrome. Exception lists, even better. This was discussed a little bit at those above links.

[When I said those things before, someone replied helpfully, here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21724710 ].

I use a Chrome just for watching Twitch streams. Despite Twitch only officially supporting 1080p60fps as the max, streamers are able to feed 1080p90fps or 1080p120fps streams to Twitch's RTMP servers. With my 60Hz monitor, Firefox is an absolute judder-fest when playing these streams, both on my desktop (Windows + Nvidia 2080TI w/HW H.264 decode) and my laptop (Fedora + Intel 630 w/VAAPI HW H.264 decode). Chromium-based browsers seem to handle these streams very well with no noticeable judder.

EDIT: I used to use Webex with Chrome also, but it mostly works fine now on Firefox, even for screen sharing. The only bug I've encountered is that the mute button occasionally doesn't work (audio not muted, but button says "unmute" and has no effect) and I have to rejoin the meeting. When the button works, it stays working for the duration of the meeting.

I use Chrome once a week or so when I suspect malfunctioning webware is failing Firefox or is having a fight with my fistful of antitracker plugins.

I believe I saw (2,8) cases where the error (was not, was) also present in Chrome.

It's a very good question, I'm afraid the answers will mostly be shallow post-defacto justifications. I think we do many things autonomosly, reflexively, and come up with justifications after-the-fact.

I use Chrome because of its built in password manager. Every time I set up a day to move some of those passwords somewhere else I feel I have something more "important" to do. I used to use Firefox a lot, but at one point it has so many performance issues, it was unusable for me and Chrome was like a breath of fresh air. I have Firefox installed now, and sometimes browse with it, but I get the feeling that websites look odd in that browser, as if I was not seeing the websites as if they supposed to look.

I use Chromium to access a few mis-programmed websites which don't work well with other browsers, such as instagram.com and maps.google.com.

Chrome is like Starbucks. It may not be the best coffee in the town, but it has acceptable quality and you can find one everywhere you go, with (more or less) the same quality.

I don't want to think about browsers - I use a browser to visit websites. Chrome works for virtually all websites I visit, and doesn't cause too many issues. Maybe Firefox does as well, but I'm too lazy to try out, unless it has something seriously better to offer.

I don't but I can share a reason someone I know uses it instead of Firefox: profile switcher.

In Chrome you have pretty little button you click on that lists all your profiles in a nice looking way; with two actions you're done.

In Firefox, you have to type about:profiles, you get a horrendously looking list with all sorts of useless information, it's just a pain to access and look at.

Implement the same UX Chrome has for profiles in Firefox and you'll get more people on board.

I use Chrome for a few specific things (though Firefox is my primary browser):

* Netflix - I think I started doing this back when it wasn't fully supported in Firefox and now it's more of a reflex than for any major reason.

* Google Meet/Slack video calls. Every so often I try to run a Meet in Firefox. The audio works flawlessly but video seems to regularly freeze.

* For the few sites that the devs didn't test in Firefox and something weird happens :)

Either opera or Chrome. Edge has become slower recently. Opera has been the memory efficient one. When FLV video downloader extension went down, there's no point in using Chrome. Whenever I start chrome, sound comes from CPU. Right now using Chrome when ever I use GCP. They will have to make it more efficient. It almost takes 1100MB memory in windows...

I use a Chromebook as my main computer and development system. No other real option. Chrome runs fast and reliably on ChromeOS.

On my iPad and iPhone I use Safari.

I mainly do web development. Anecdotally I hear about more problems from Firefox users than from Chrome, Safari, or Edge users. Sometimes that's not a problem with Firefox but it does seem to exist as the outlier.

I started to use Chrome on phone because it worked well with many tabs. And I am in process of moving from Firefox on desktop to one of the Chromium based browsers because the upcoming Firefox redesign is the final straw in the long line of Firefox usability destruction by Mozillas "designers"

Probably my biggest reason to switch back to chrome from firefox was firefox not supporting the content only zoom made from trackpad on Macos. It is so handy that you can just zoom webpages like they are pictures without site reflow etc. And interestingly enıugh firefox did not support it when i switched.

Every time I try to use Firefox instead, I give up and switch back to Chrome because:

1. Scrolling works really badly. 2. Save as PDF usually doesn’t work well.

I have noticed that quite a few posts mention the bad scrolling. Firefox devs just copy how Chrome works and you will make more people switch.

Chrome tab bar reduces width and overflows, Firefox tab bar scrolls

That’s makes chrome more power user friendly. Sadly

Habit, extensions that doesn't exist under FF, and I like the UI more. ungoogled-chromium is what I use https://github.com/Eloston/ungoogled-chromium

Habit. Also my employer some years ago settled on GMail and Google Sheets/Docs/etc. (Not that they don't work well enough in Firefox.) I tend to use Chrome for work and Firefox for personal stuff, just as a convenient way to keep GMail accounts separate.

Page translation. This remains the feature I miss the most in Firefox (mobile app included).

Firefox doesn't save credit card numbers.

The feature was there, then was removed, readded, may be US-only now? I don't know WTF they're doing, but for shopping/donations I need to launch a non-Firefox browser.

Live Captions, mostly, though lately I've been using other browsers and just dragging URLs into Chrome if I need captioning for them.

I'm really hoping Apple introduces a comparable feature soon for iOS and macOS.

Firefox's security team was gutted last year. I don't think they have enough resources to properly secure their browser. The alternatives are webkit or chromium based browsers.

I use Chromium, but I've always had a better experience using hardware acceleration and it runs a lot faster than Firefox when playing videos and having multiple tabs open and uses less resources.

Only one reason: Chrome has hands down the best security track record.

I heard Chrome is faster. It might not be, given that I'm running a bunch of privacy extensions. But I don't really know how to benchmark this.

I am actually suprised nobody mentions profiles.

I seperate stuff using profiles (little avatar next to menu button on top-right corner)

Especially important if you want to split your clients' stuff and with your own things. (History, bookmarks, sync)

And sync is the second reason. Of course firefox would work too but they were just late to the game. I already had lots of stuff (bookmarks, history, passwords) to migrate to...

I would prefer Safari for longer battery life, less resource consumption and overall smooth experience (plus privacy features) than Chrome.

Integration with Google services and account

I was there when IE was better than Netscape. Gmail became a thing and I loved Google and their quality since.

I use it on my work laptop.

- Most of our web-app users are on Chrome anyway.

- The dev-tools are excellent.

- I'm lazy and it already has all my passwords.

I settled on Chrome years ago, and it hasn't caused enough grief for me to investigate alternatives.

I use Firefox 99.9% of the time, but I will note that Chrome performs better on lower end hardware.

Better dev tools. So I only use it for localhost. Everything else in Firefox.

No matter what my current dreamboat browser is at home, I always use Chrome at work. Their dev tools are unparalleled. I’m amazed MS hasn’t poached the Dev Tools director to work on VS.

It remembers all my (unimportant) passwords.

Passwords and autocomplete.

it's excellent; it works and doesn't get in my way. I care about privacy a little, but i'm not even interested in looking for an alternative at the moment.

Because monoculture force me to (I only use it to test with).