Or a fork of Firefox like fennec
To support independent Wikis
- Indie Wiki Buddy
For those who are multilingual that are annoyed at websites autotranslating via a shitty ai
- Reddit Untranslate
- Youtube Anti Translate
To make Youtube better
- SponsorBlock
- YouTube Row Fixer
- Hide Youtube-Shorts
I think Youtube Anti Translate only works on video titles and descriptions? There’s Youtube No Translate which does the same and also keeps the audio track in the original language so you don’t get a shitty AI dub
Many commenters mentioned ublock, but don’t forget to enable additional filters for shit like cookie banners or other annoyances
For android mobile I use Ironfox.
https://gitlab.com/ironfox-oss/IronFox
Its a fork of the now discontinued Mull browser.
I’ve tried it a few times but tend to fall back to Fennec. While Librewolf on desktop is restrictive by design, it also still allows you tweak the settings to your liking (with some scolding). Ironfox felt much more locked down to me, and if a site was completely broken, I couldn’t do anything about it in the settings.
I went on the same path. I was surprised how many sites were broken in IronFox.
I know the mobile browser space is just weird overall, especially Firefox forks, but it definitely stood out to me. Things that work totally fine in Librewolf out-of-the-box were totally busted, and most settings are inaccessible.
I’m still keeping an eye on it though, as Fennec leaves a lot to be desired, and using a chromium-based browser like Vanadium won’t do it for me because I rely so much on the cross-platform sync functions.
Ublock origin and privacy badger
ublock origin, nutensor(umatrix), twp, bypass paywalls clean, dark reader, vimfx
Category “how the hell isn’t this included by default” :
- Copy Plain Text: Adds an option in the right click menu to copy the selected text as plain text, without formatting
- Copy Link Text : Adds an option in the right click menu to copy the text of a link
- Markdown Reader: Show formatted markdown. I tried several extensions for this and this is the one I prefer personally. It has an index panel on the left which is sooo useful.
Category “Preserving your mental health online” :
- uBlock Origin: You really need to block those ads
- Consent-O-Matic: Never see a cookie pop-up again in your life (it auto accepts or refuse in your place).
- SponsorBlock: Skips Youtube sponsorships. You can define which ones you want to skip and which you want to watch (paid ads, self promo, etc)
- Return Youtube Dislike: Show the number of dislikes on videos. It’s not a real number, it’s extrapolated based on how many people with the app have clicked dislike.
- Youtube No Translate: Keeps titles, descriptions and audio tracks in their original language
Category “Usefull” :
- KeePassXC-Browser: To access your password database from your browser
- Whatever fingerprinting protection you can find (Canvas, Fonts, WebGL, etc… half those I used have been pulled, haven’t found a replacement for all of them)
Category “Would be nice if…” :
- A user agent switcher… if you want all websites to block you 😑
- NoScript: Block javascript and create custom rules to allow it only when and where you want. Or the reverse. It was great a few years ago but I’ve stopped using it because websites require allowing more and more otherwise nothing works and it’s hell can we cancel javascript please?
- Dark Reader: Dark mode for all websites. Can make some websites unreadable, but you can turn it off for that website. Makes everything much slower though so I don’t use it.
BTW for plain text, ctrl+shift+V pastes as plain text.
For copying link text if you hold alt and drag you can select text without activating the link, then ctrl+C as usual.
I had no idea about the second one! I still like having a context menu option, right click + E seems much less of a hassle than selecting the text and copying, but it’s nice to know you can select part of a link! How did I never notice that you could in 20 years? 😅
Yeah alt+select doesn’t work 100% of the time too so the extension sounds nice lol
Pro-tip: you may not need Consent-O-Matic. There are uBlock Origin cookie banner filters that you can enable (even though they break some websites, even if it’s rare)
But Consent-O-Matic does not break websites (very rarely so), so it’s better than uBlock in that specific area.
I’m not gonna lie, I’m a little bit of an extensions hoarder, which is bad for fingerprinting 😣, but I seriously do use the extra ones.
Vital:
uBlock - obviously, some people even suggest to only use this extension and nothing else to reduce fingerprinting. Make sure to enable those filters! Also check out the advanced mode, eliminates the need for NoScript.
Not Vital But Really Good To Have:
LibRedirect - Never worry again about visiting the original social media site, you can immediately be redirected to a proxy version of the site that doesn’t stalk you. Great when I’m forced to click a Twitter, Reddit, Youtube, etc. link. Unfortunately, some proxy services are dead (Instagram, Tiktok, Invidious is always under threat, etc.)
Bitwarden - Password manager
Dark Reader - Nice, especially on fingerprint resisting browsers like Librewolf that don’t let your browser/sites see your system settings to automatically pick the dark mode of a website. Have singed my eyes a couple times.
For Language Learners (like me):
Yomitan - The GOAT of tools, a popup dictionary that can be used to instantly look up the definition of a word in your target language, and connects with Anki, a flashcard app. I use it for making vocabulary cards from Japanese media I consume. Literally all the other resources are meant to be paired with this.
Asbplayer - Lets you add subtitles to whatever media you’re streaming and makes the text selectable. Paired with Yomitan, you can easily make Anki flashcards from the TV/Movies/Videos you watch.
Lap Clipboard Inserter - By using a clipboard extension with Textractor, you can hook a game/visual novel and auto-copy all the game text to a webpage, which can be paired with Yomitan (you guessed it!) to look up words. You have to turn it on for individual pages, so don’t worry about it constantly stalking you.
Neat, But Random:
Mastodon Streetpass - Helps you figure out if a person is on Mastodon by looking for a custom link on their site. Collects a list of them and tells you the date that it found the account. Basically just browse as usual and it will passively collect a list.
A fellow Japanese learner and VN enjoyer! Are you on Linux? I ran into issues with Lap Clipboard Inserter not capturing any clipboard events when the window was in the background, and I think it’s an issue with Wayland, since all firefox-based browsers had the same issue but chromium-based ones didn’t
Yep, I used Fedora Kinoite now! I originally used Fedora Silverblue, but that used GNOME + Wayland, and I dropped it cause spectacle couldn’t take screenshots in a Wayland based system. I switched to Kinoite because it uses Plasma instead. I don’t know if Wayland causes clipboard issues, as I never tested/got that far when trying to make Silverblue work. I just rebased cause I couldn’t get ShareX (the tool I used while on Windows) to work with WINE.
I use my clipboard tool with FF and have little to no issues there. The only thing I will note is, Textractor hooks the sentences a little weirdly. None of the hooks are perfect, the best one I can find that isn’t complete gibberish is a hook that simply copies the sentence twice. All the others repeat characters in a sentence like 50 times, so they’re unsalvageable. Not sure if it’s a browser hook thing, or a trying to force Windows apps in weird ways thing, but it’s not as smooth as a process compared to native Windows 😅
At least from my research, Kinoite is Wayland. I think you can go to KDE (Plasma) settings, find the “About this System” page and it should say “Graphics Platform: Wayland”. GNOME and KDE are desktop environments, X11 and Wayland are display managers (I think of them like rendering engines).Though it’s true that Spectacle has issues on Wayland, apparently all screenshot apps do, due to security restrictions and slow development. But Spectacle works great on KDE because Spectacle is made by KDE, and gets special privileges when run on KDE desktop. Same with GNOME screenshot when run on GNOME desktop. Third-party screenshot tools don’t get these privileges and don’t work well on either (at least when using Wayland), you can read more about it here: https://github.com/ksnip/ksnip/issues/727.
As far as Textractor goes, I haven’t had any issues with text hooking, but from my experience it heavily depends on the game, and I’ve only tested 2 games on linux so far. But if I’m reading you correctly…are you using Firefox inside WINE?
For keeping cookies in bento boxes:
Those two are an absolute must for me.
For me:
- uBlock origin
- Libredirect
- Decentraleyes (Although I don’t really know how much it really helps for privacy)
LocalCDN is more up to date then Decentralize.
I use it with umatrix
Depends on the user.
For me it’s uBlock Origin, NoScript, Cookie AutoDelete and Binnen-I be gone
Surprised no one posted this link: https://awesome-privacy.xyz/security-tools/browser-extensions
Great resource btw, check out the website for other tools.
uBlock Origin Firefox Multi-Account Contaniners (and then use them) If you use some kind of webmail like google, hotmail, yahoo, then: Webmail Ad Blocker Remove FBclid and UTM
Optional Dark Reader Enhancer for Youtube
For vanilla FF I use multi - account containers, uBlock, and privacy badger.
For other FF forks like Librewolf, I get more blocky, like JShelter, a random agent switcher, and if that breaks a site beyond use I try Chameleon and NoScirpt.
Library extension. Go to as page selling a book (Amazon, Powell’s, etc.) and the extension will show you if you’re local library has the book, how many copies, and if they’re available for checkout. You can then click through and put a hold on the book.
Great cure for impulse buying of books. I’ve read more and bought less since using it.
Wow! Brilliant! Unfortunately my local library is not in their catalogue. They do have a public catalog and even a way to get online books, also with search capabilities, so hopefully they can find a way to integrate. I submitted their data to the extension maintainers.
ublock origin, dark background and light text
