UN-AI YOUR INTERNET

In this section you'll be dropping chrome like the absolute shitshow that it's become, and picking up a different browser. If you've already been using chrome for a while, this might come with some small learning curve, but probably not. Nearly every modern browser will happily import your bookmarks and saved passwords from any other browser, and it will probably ask you if you want to do that during the install. You can create a mozilla account and sync your bookmarks and passwords between any browser that is based on firefox (which will be the first 5 browsers listed here) including mobile firefox and mobile waterfox. Firefox (Windows/Mac/Linux/Android/iOS-sort of) is probably the easiest alternative to chrome. Whether or not it's the best alternative is up to a lot of subjective preferences. Firefox (and all of its forks) allows us to freely install extensions, which we will use to modify the way the internet is delivered to you. Firefox is a Mozilla client, which runs on the "Gecko" browser engine. Gecko is free and open source, and so many of the Chrome alternatives we will list here use it. By creating a mozilla account, you can log into Firefox and sync your passwords, bookmarks, tabs, etc, between the mobile and desktop version. Firefox has a mobile browser which provides most, if not all, of the same exact features the desktop browser provides, and can be found on your device's app store, though the iOS version (because of apple policies) is much less useful than the android version. If you are on a mobile apple device then your options are unfortunately a lot more limited. Firefox ships with some AI features, but there is now a switch in the settings that allows you to turn it all off, all at once. Floorp (Windows/Mac/Linux) is a fork of firefox that focuses on customizability. Back in the early days of firefox, you could change the layout of the UI pretty much at will in a lot of different configurations. Mozilla significantly reduced customizability (without modifying chrome.css) sometime in the early 2000s. Floorp brings all of that back, and adds some more, making it maybe one of the most customizable of the current browsers. If you want to be able to decide where your tabs appear and what they look like and all kinds of other things, without modifying the user file manually, then Floorp is the way to go. Floorp uses the same mozilla account as every other firefox based browser to sync tabs and passwords and whatnot. Sadly, floorp does not have a mobile version, but syncs just fine with firefox mobile and waterfox mobile. Floorp ships with the same AI features that standard Firefox ships with, and the same single switch to turn it all off in the settings. Waterfox (Windows/Mac/Linux/Android) is a fork of firefox, and uses the open source Gecko engine from Mozilla. Waterfox has the same general features supported by firefox, but with a more chrome-like UI. If you liked chrome, then this might be the firefox fork for you. Waterfox allows you to use all the same extensions as firefox, and will sync with your mozilla account, if you want to sync passwords, bookmarks, and tabs, etc. While waterfox is available on Desktop and Android, it is not available on Apple devices. Waterfox does not include an "AI" agent by default. Librewolf (Windows/Mac/Linux) is another fork of Firefox, but it's massively focused on privacy. If firefox is a fortress, Librewolf is a hardened, underground bunker. Librewolf is so focused on privacy and security that it might make browsing the web inconvenient, especially for novice users. It integrates with a Mozilla account for syncing, and allows the same extensions. While Librewolf is available for many desktop environments, it does not have a mobile version. Librewolf does not include an "AI" agent by default. Zen Browser (Windows/Mac/Linux) is built on Gecko, so is a firefox fork, but its interface is completely different from the usual. Zen's layout is actually different from the majority of other browsers, and so you either like it or you don't. It's heavy on privacy, it doesn't collect any user data, and it can install the same extensions as firefox, so you can use it for our purposes here, like the rest of these browsers. Just be aware that it's different. Maybe better, maybe worse, depending on how you feel about side bars and tab layouts. If you are on iOS (using an iphone or ipad) then thanks to apple's walled garden policies, things are a little more interesting. You have essentially three options: The Orion browser, the Brave browser, or the default Safari browser (way less effective). Orion (Mac/iOS/iPadOS) is a browser made by Kagi, the same people behind the Kagi search engine (The browser is free, unlike the search engine). Orion supports some essential extensions out of the box, and may or may not support extensions from firefox, chrome, and apple, depending (apparently) on the extension. It's based on webkit, which is the engine that drives Safari, but its been heavily modified. The important thing is that it supports the firefox version of the uBlock Origin extension by default, which is what we'll be using. Orion uses its own sync on icloud to share passwords and bookmarks and whatnot between devices. This seems to be tied into your apple account, but I am not a mac guy and your mileage may vary. It does seem very easy. Brave (Windows/Mac/Linux/Android/iOS/iPadOS) is a popular browser with a built in adblocker that replicates a lot of the things we'll be using extensions to do on the other browsers. This means that you can use it on iOS and iPadOS, where you can't install uBlock Origin. The steps for adding custom block lists to its built-in adblocker (which we will cover in the extension section) will be a little different, but it operates essentially the same. Brave is free, but has caught some flak in the past for some design and policy decisions concerning ads. Brave is a fork of chrome, but the fork happened long enough ago that it remains unaffected by google's recent decisions to neuter chrome's ability to block ads (and also "AI"). Note that Brave has its own "sync" for passwords and bookmarks and other data to share between devices, and this seems to be slightly more complicated, but maybe more secure? It's hard to say. Brave is the recommended browser for iOS and iPadOS. You can also use Safari (which I won't bother linking, since it's already pre-installed on your i-device), but the process will be a little different than with these other (better) 3rd party browsers, and will be significantly less effective. We'll cover the differences in the extension section. I'm going to assume that you know how to install a browser on whatever device you are using. If not, then each of these browsers has a pretty self-explanatory "DOWNLOAD" button. You'll click that, save the file somewhere on your device, and then run the file. Or if you're on a mobile device, you can visit whichever app store your device uses, and search for the browser there. If a browser has a mobile version it will more than likely have a link to the app store on the website. Though I don't know how you would do it, I am not responsible if you somehow blow up your device while attempting to install a browser.