There's maybe a handful where I'm not sure, if you can do them via settings.
One where it's technically the case, is that they remove Pocket at compile time. But to my knowledge, Pocket integration is pretty much a glorified bookmark. There's not much code to remove. And it can be disabled via about:config by setting extensions.pocket.enabled to false.

I guess, to be fair to LibreWolf, Mozilla has been helping out the Tor Browser devs since forever, so most things needed for Tor Browser are just a toggle in the Firefox settings.
As a result, though, there's also lots of settings, which partially need expert knowledge. So, there is definitely room for different presets. But yeah, still leaves the question, whether one really needs a different executable to adjust these settings.

[–] EherNicht@feddit.org 16 points 2 months ago (1 children)

It ships preconfigured without invading your privacy (like Firefox does). Just look up a comparison online.

[+] corbin@infosec.pub -13 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Firefox doesn't invade anyone's privacy.

[–] EherNicht@feddit.org 10 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Sadly, with default settings that’s the case. Partly due to Telemetry being active and Google being the default search engine.

[–] corbin@infosec.pub 6 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Telemetry is not privacy-invading, it's pretty well anonymized. It's also a lot easier to change the search engine than it is to download a completely different web browser.

[–] EherNicht@feddit.org 0 points 2 months ago (1 children)

You should inform yourself before writing. And I say that without any harmful intent. To get a true privacy focused Browser you need to harden Firefox (and may download some scripts from github to do so). Or just use LibreWolf as it has a lot of tracking preventative stuff built in similarly to Mullvad Browser or Tor Browser. Those two are however of course still way better. The latter being the best with regards of anonymity if you know what you are doing. I can just encourage you to inform yourself about the Firefox browser which is better than Chrome of course, but still compromises your privacy in the default shipped state.

[–] corbin@infosec.pub 3 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (2 children)

I have informed myself. There is nothing personally-identifiable in the data Mozilla collects in Firefox: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/telemetry-clientid

Technical data includes information about your Firefox version and language, device operating system and hardware configuration, memory, basic information about crashes and errors, outcome of automated processes like updates and safebrowsing. When Firefox sends data to us, your IP address is temporarily collected as part of our server logs. IP addresses are deleted every 14 days.

[–] EherNicht@feddit.org 0 points 2 months ago

You seem to ignore information collected about you is collected information about you.

[–] EherNicht@feddit.org -1 points 2 months ago

This seems like and IS personally identifiable information….

[–] JackbyDev@programming.dev 4 points 2 months ago (2 children)

What telemetry options are enabled by default that are invasive? I'm not saying they aren't there, it's just been forever since I installed it and I sync my settings. Also, if our bar for saying something is invading our privacy is so low that we say having a default search browser selection as Google then I think we're going to far.

[–] corbin@infosec.pub 9 points 2 months ago

There's a lot of people on here that see literally any telemetry or analytics as evil, even though it's a necessary component for any software at the scale of Firefox (especially automated bug reports). Mozilla makes it clear they collect as little data as possible: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/telemetry-clientid

[–] EherNicht@feddit.org 0 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Why then not use Chrome if you are fine with Google?!

[–] JackbyDev@programming.dev 0 points 2 months ago

Don't misunderstand me saying that Google Search being the default is not a major problem as me saying that I'm cool with Google Search or Google in general. You can change the default search engine. Not every "bad thing" these companies do are an equal level of "badness" if that makes sense. A browser shipping with Google Search as the default search engine is very minor to me. I don't use Google Search unless Duck Duck Go doesn't give me a good answer.
My biggest problem with Chromium based browsers is very specifically their market share and that it effectively allows Google to define how the web works because of it. I think Safari is still it's own thing. Firefox is, of course. But that's it. Even a few years back Edge was it's own thing but it's since switched to Chromium. IE is dead I believe, unless there's still some crazy long term enterprise support release. Opera is Chromium based too, now, but I don't remember when exactly this happened. Chromium is still mostly controlled by Google. That's an absolutely massive share of browsers being controlled by Google. (And even many non-browser programs when you consider Electron uses Chromium.)

Chromium is deprecating manifest v2 and the newer v3 has neutered ad blocking capabilities. In Alphabet's SEC fillings they list ad blocking as a challenge to their revenue. End users can't just flip v2 back on (unless the devs of their browser put work to let them). End users can change their default search engine though. Very easily. Trivially so. Who knows, maybe as a result of that court ruling we'll see browsers forced to have no default search engine in the future. I think that's better, yes, but I really don't think having Google Search as the default is that massive of a concern compared to much of the other shit they're doing.

[+] rtxn@lemmy.world -54 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (2 children)

Yes, but only begrudgingly.

(edit) oh no, I've said something bad about the lesser evil, and the people who have made it their identity to violently cum all over the first thing that isn't owned by Google are after me. I hope the pipe bomb hitman is at least polite.

[–] TheTechnician27@lemmy.world 98 points 2 months ago (3 children)

Nah, Firefox is way better.

[–] atocci@lemmy.world 21 points 2 months ago (4 children)

I just wish Firefox updates weren't so intrusive. Having it hit me with "Firefox updated in the background, restart to continue using Firefox" while I'm trying to use QuickBooks for my job is so disruptive when QuickBooks doesn't save automatically and never opens back up to where I left it off. I won't go back to Chrome, but I never had it pull that sort of forced restart on me.

[–] altima_neo@lemmy.zip 58 points 2 months ago (3 children)

You can disable that. I have mine set to notify me when updates are available

[–] atocci@lemmy.world 12 points 2 months ago

Amazing, I'll give that a shot

[–] pennomi@lemmy.world 8 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I’m happy that they give an option but goddamn would it kill them to have the safe option as the default for once?

[–] Barbarian@sh.itjust.works 16 points 2 months ago (1 children)

There are lots of people who will never update if asked to update at their leisure. I think it's far better for user security to have updates be forced by default, with the option to schedule them yourself.

[–] bl7hbl7h@lemmy.world 2 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Or batch update some of your apps with Patch My PC Home Updater

[–] atocci@lemmy.world 1 points 2 months ago

Looks like it didn't work unfortunately 😞 Thank you for the suggestion though!

[–] Ephera@lemmy.ml 19 points 2 months ago

From what I understand, Chrome doesn't need to do this, because when you close it, it keeps running in the background and does its upgrades then, which is also pretty intrusive.

If you're updating Firefox via the built-in auto-updater, you can tell it in the settings that it should only install updates when you tell it to do so.

[–] TheTechnician27@lemmy.world 13 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Ah. I guess I don't notice that since I'm on Linux and just update Firefox whenever I want.

If you go to Hamburger menu > Settings > General > Check for updates but let you choose to install them, you won't auto update anymore. I agree that would be annoying.

[–] atocci@lemmy.world 5 points 2 months ago

Thanks! I had no idea this setting existed and it will make Firefox so much more practical for me to use.

[–] fuckwit_mcbumcrumble@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 2 months ago (4 children)

Restart Firefox to let it finish updating. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a screen that says you HAVE to restart right now at this very moment.

[–] atocci@lemmy.world 9 points 2 months ago (1 children)

When it happens, it doesn't let me do anything other than stay on the already loaded webpage without restarting.

Open a new tab > "Restart to continue..."
Click a link > "Restart to continue..."
Type a URL > "Restart to continue..."
and etc

[–] fuckwit_mcbumcrumble@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 2 months ago (2 children)

What OS? I almost never close out of Firefox on my Macs at home and I've never seen that message there. FF on Windows seems to be the same. It's been ages though since I've left FF open for months on end on Linux though.

[–] rudyharrelson@lemmy.radio 4 points 2 months ago

I've had this same experience on Linux Mint. I'll run apt update & apt upgrade and, occasionally, if Firefox is one of the things being updated, new tabs and new pages won't load and will tell me I need to do a system restart to continue browsing.

I always update manually, so it never happens without me initiating the update first. But sometimes I'm like, "Dangit, didn't realize this update would require a restart to keep using Firefox."

[–] atocci@lemmy.world 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Windows 10

[–] MaXsteri@lemmy.world 2 points 2 months ago

Same on MacOS

[–] JackbyDev@programming.dev 1 points 2 months ago

They said at work, perhaps it is a corporate thingy that forces them to be on the mandated version.

[–] Jesus_666@lemmy.world 1 points 2 months ago

It happens on Linux – after your package manager has updated Firefox. Which typically means that you told it to. So it's not really a surprise.

[–] atocci@lemmy.world 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I got it again unfortunately, here's a screenshot of what it looks like

[–] fuckwit_mcbumcrumble@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 2 months ago

I found this. https://superuser.com/questions/1451210/how-can-i-make-firefox-stop-forcing-me-to-restart-my-browser

On Linux, disabling Firefox updates in Firefox itself will not fix this issue, because Firefox's own updater doesn't actually have this bug! You get this warning when the Linux package manager has already replaced the files underneath the running program.

You say it's windows, but I think you said it's a work machine so maybe they're updating firefox from under you?

[–] original_reader@lemm.ee 11 points 2 months ago

I wish this blanket statement were true. Firefox is better in some respects, but surely not all. Tab and session management - just to name two examples - are just handled better by the Chromium crowd, as much as it pains me to say that.

That said, I still use Firefox in most cases.

[–] curbstickle@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Different profiles on Firefox are nowhere near Chrome.

I'm still going to use FF, but there are areas it lags behind Chrome. That's the only big one for me.

[–] Daxtron2@startrek.website 7 points 2 months ago

Naturally, the browser that receives way less funding has less Dev work available.

[–] A_Union_of_Kobolds@lemmy.world 2 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Same... I know it's better and worth supporting, I just don't like using it for some reason.

[–] Empricorn@feddit.nl 16 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Back in the day, Firefox was literally not as good as Chrome. I personally think that has reversed and it's now much better than Chrome. Leagues better, now that Chrome is banning UBlock Origin. I do wish we had more competition than just Chrome, Safari, and Firefox though...

[–] casmael@lemm.ee 4 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Yeah any other alternatives? There’s arc, but I think that’s just chromium underneath (see above, meme)

[–] eatham@aussie.zone 5 points 2 months ago (1 children)

There's ladybird and servo, but neither are near a release and ladybird won't even have an alpha til 2026.

[–] mke@lemmy.world 3 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

And to make matters more complicated,

Servo, as far I know, has no plans to be a browser. Instead, they want to offer an alternative to Blink (the Chrome rendering engine), so that other software can be made with it. This seems to a common misconception.
Ladybird's project lead and main developer, Andreas Kling, may or may not hold controversial views that some would prefer to avoid supporting.

I really want there to be more options in the browser market that aren't Blink based (or WebKit, sorry Apple), but the situation's tough.

[–] CosmicTurtle0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 13 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I'm an advocate for Firefox, but it is slowly, slowly entering enshittification.

The addition of AI, dark patterns to enable "sponsored bookmarks" upon reinstall, ads (albeit subtle) when using the address bar for search...

All of these can be disabled, some easily, some with feature flags.

Sure the enshittification isn't anywhere near the pace as Chrome but it's happening. And again, this is coming from a maybe 10 year financial donor to Mozilla.

Firefox is better than Chrome, no question but there is an opportunity for a new browser to challenge the field.

[–] ours@lemmy.world 9 points 2 months ago

You make good points but some people are knew jerking on Firefox's AI. One of them is client side translation which is really neat as I don't need to send the content to some Google ad data vacuum.

Another AI model helps differently abled people to have websites described to them using, again, a local model.

There is also Libtefox which uses the same rendering engine without the other stuff if you don't want it.

I consider it an important act to use non Chromium browsers as not to completely hand over the power of rendering web content to Google.