this post was submitted on 03 Mar 2025
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LibreWolf
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Welcome to the official community for LibreWolf.
LibreWolf is designed to increase protection against tracking and fingerprinting techniques, while also including a few security improvements. LibreWolf also aims to remove all the telemetry, data collection and annoyances, as well as disabling anti-freedom features like DRM. If you have any question please visit our FAQ first: https://librewolf.net/docs/faq/
To learn more or to download the browser visit the website: https://librewolf.net/
If you want to contribute head over to our Codeberg: https://codeberg.org/librewolf
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Honest question; is there any potential downside to switching to LibreWolf from Firefox? e.g. should all my addons/browser Extensions still work?
been using it for half a year now. you can log into your account, all the extensions are compatible, ublock is installed by default. ff store themes also work.
has no google search by default but can be added (still the best for searching pictures, otherwise im fine with qwant)
by default it deletes cookies, but that can be changed.
drm is also disabled by default, but turns out music streaming sites are just whinin, they dont really need it.
From a usability perspective it's not as good as Firefox. But from a privacy stand point it's much better.
What I mean about usability is that due to it trying to prevent you from being fingerprinted it opens the browser in the same size window everytime, regardless of whether you prefer maximised or not. It has dark mode turned off. It doesn't remember cookies unless you explicitly manually add an exception. From a privacy perspective these are all good things but for convenience they're not.
All of these mild inconveniences can however be turned off if you wish. Just be aware you won't be browsing as securely then though.
As a Firefox replacement in all other regards, it's pretty much the same software. No, it is the same software.
If you use Linux and a password manager you may have an issue getting flatpaks to speak to each other and you also may have to move a folder from .mozilla to .librewolf to get them to speak to each other. These are easily searchable issues if you have them with simple fixes though.
Tap for spoiler
DM me for more details if you run into this issue and need helpIn all other regards, to me at least, it feels just like Firefox
Thanks for the in-depth reply, I truly appreciate it! I’ve loaded a Bazzite installer onto a flash drive over the weekend - but ran out of time, before I could switch NVME drives to install..
More privacy is a good thing, so happy to roll with some minor inconveniences - but Dark Mode is definitely a relatively high priority for me; so I’ll have to figure that one out once I get up and running.
Already prepared to run a secondary (Chromium) browser for compatibility and Vivaldi seems to be getting recommended a lot recently — at least from a de-Google / de-US perspective.
Doesn't this make one stand out as "the person with the unmaximized/weird screen resolution"?
The point is to make everyone have the same size window therefore nobody stands out. We're all Spartacus as it were. Of course you can just click maximise if you want.
When maximised the size and resolution of your screen can be determined and used as a piece of data among many to uniquely identify you and attempt to figure out your identity. Depending on what you're doing and which sites you're using this may or may not be a concern.
For example, when I use my university's website, they already know who I am. I log in with an email address uniquely tied to me. So maximising the window then, to me, doesn't really matter. But if I'm browsing news articles from websites hell bent on bombarding me with adverts, cookies, and trackers then I'll stick with the default Librewolf sizing in an attempt to blend in.
If you care about usability, I'd recommend Zen browser. Not as hard as Librewolf but it's not owned by Mozilla.
As I understand it Librewolf is basically Firefox without Mozilla and almost all extensions I care about and use work perfectly.
I also believe you can import your Firefox configs into Librewolf without any hassle.
Does sync work? I am guessing it won't if every Mozilla part is removed.
https://librewolf.net/docs/faq/#can-i-use-firefox-sync-with-librewolf-is-it-safe-to-do-so
(things change quickly though, given Mozilla Corp decisions)
Damn, that was the only reason I didn't make the switch long time back. Ig I heard wrong or assumed it wouldn't, thanks for the link.
Yes. There's a toggle in about: config (fxaccount sync or something similar) that allows FF account sync. Will do everything from extensions, to bookmarks to history if you're keeping that.
My banks website won't login on Lirbrewolf. Tried disabling every setting imaginable.
Does it work with Firefox? Have you had any luck spoofing your UserAgsnt to Chrome?
I know I already have issues logging into a SAP-based system with Firefox to view/download my payslips, so I already need to use a Chromium-based on occasion as a back-up.
Yes, works fine in Firefox
What's the error you get? Perhaps someone has dealt with it before. What overrides have you tried?
There are several things that might affect some sites and are more troublesome than others, for example:
ublockOrigin can give trouble to some sites, a quick test is to temporarily disable it and see if the site works. It can be investigated further what specific filter might be affecting the site.