I swear this question comes up everyday in Lemmy 😅.
Firefox, I just use Firefox because, it works, it has enough privacy measures, and everyone is looking at the codebase, something that cannot be said about most (if not all) forks.
Zen browser. Its a browser that looks like arc browser but its based on Firefox and has tracking removed. Its really nice. They also have their own theme system to change how the browser looks and acts
Mullvad Browser when I'm on my Desktop, which is basically the Tor Browser but without the Tor network. The Mullvad Browser is instead designed to be used with a VPN.
Vanadium when I'm on my phone, which is is a hardened variant of Chromium providing enhanced privacy and security, similar to how GrapheneOS compares to AOSP.
And when I'm at work or using any other computer I try to mainly use Firefox.
Firefox with ublock origin for both desktop and mobile.
Those two programs alone block out like 75% of the annoyances and dangers of the modern internet. Near-complete removal of ads and a couple nice healthy adware and malware guards on top of that.
Add on a VPN and a few more Firefox extensions and I feel that I can browse the net anxiety-free.
Hardened Firefox on my PC and Waterfox on my phone.
Reason: mostly because I have been using Firefox for a long time and I want to stay away from Chromioum-based browsers (but not out of privacy concerns :) ).
If you want to stick with Chromium-based browsers, you could try Vivaldi. I am a Firefox user myself but Vivaldi is my backup browser for those rare occasions where I have issues. 95% of the browser is open source, with the remaining 5% being comprised of the closed source UI. Vivaldi has a pretty reasonable privacy policy, an inbuilt ad-blocker and is a 100% employee owned company. It supports all major operating systems and has a sync feature so you could use it as your main browser across all devices if you wanted.
Firefox with Betterfox user script. Then from there is a bunch privacy focused/oriented extensions. I also harden my DNS with custom host files from StevenBlack. I also point all my devices to NextDNS as another catch and also to standardize things as I use NextDNS to manage my kids access to the world.
I do need to create a private VPN (of my own) still so my mobile devices can be setup behind StevenBlack host entries.
Firefox on desktop and Mobile. To keep browser monopoly away. All settings set to max strictness except no DNS, because I have a VPN. Firefox works on 99.9% of sites. You can use a script called Arkenfox, to harden FF even more, almost to Librewolf, but with the advantage of updates coming directly from mozilla. I love the sync function across FF, so that's why I have it on my mobile as well, it's seemless.
Firefox with plugins. If we want there to be anything but Chromium and Safari in the future it's simply what needs to be done. Forks of Firefox will disappear when Firefox does ...
Mostly LibreWolf, but I’ve been enjoying Zen Browser recently. It’s based on Firefox but with lots of cool extra functionality baked in. It is still in alpha though and I’ve experienced some bugs, including it crashing my whole system a couple of times, but it’s very promising
On my laptop, Brave for non-"personal" things (such as fediverse, SoundCloud, AI tools, daily browsing, etc) and Firefox for "personal" things (such as WhatsApp Web, LinkedIn, accessing local govt. services, etc). On my smartphone, Firefox for everything (I disabled the native Chrome).
I've been using Brave in a daily basis because it's well integrated with adblocking tools, especially considering the ongoing strife regarding Chromium's Manifest V2 support, where Brave nicely stands keeping its Manifest V2 support independently of what Google wishes or not.
Firefox is also good, but I noticed that, for me, it has been slightly heavier than Brave. So I use it parallel to Brave, for things I don't need to use often. For mobile, it's awesome, as it is one of the few browsers that support extensions, so I use Firefox for Android, together with adblocking extensions.
On PC, my daily driver is Firefox Developer, patched with my CSS along with Betterfox for enhanced privacy over ArkenFox. I am an Admin and run a number of sites, so this helps.
Librewolf as general backup. Mullvad as second backup but I find that I am not the best use case for it, on top that I use different VPN services. It is for non-tech users, is not bad, just not the best tool for me but it is what I will tell people to use when using my PC since the other two have very UI minimal, heavy keyboard-centric setups. Tor for when I need more privacy/testing. Keep a copy of ungoogled Chromiu, mostly vanilla, only uBlock, again for testing and the off-chance fuzzy site but barely ever use it. They all, aside UG, sync bookmarks via Nextcloud instance so I do not need to sign into FF sync.
On Android, Mull, or CookieWeb Preview because the excellent extension management due to their pop-up window. Great for things like uBlock on medium mode, otherwise medium mode on mobile is a pajn to use, on Mull I keep it on Easy mode. Nevertheless, uBlock is a must in today's internet. Tor for when travelling abroad and do not need to sign-on to anything. Keeping extensions to a minimum. Each browser connects to different DNS services to minimise overlap, along rotating VPN servers from non-5 eyes countries as the minimum. Sounds like a lot but once you set it up, it is mostly set-and-forget.
On Mobile I use Firefox Nightly but it is a pain. It crashes all the god damn time. I don't know how y'all do it, Mull is the same thing because of the upstream. I sometimes consider using Vanadium but I ain't pissed enough yet, I think.
On Desktop, Librewolf for mostly everything that I can manage work with it, what doesn't I open whatever other browser that's available.
firefox but hardened. dont want to use any chromiumed browser bc of the monopoly, and librewolf is just a fork of firefox so too little difference to switch
Since I have not seen it yet in the comments, I use Floorp, a Firefox fork with some nice UI improvements (and apparently some performance improvements, but both are very fast for me).
Tor Browser on both Linux/Gnome and Android. I believe I get not only the benefits of ad-blocking and anti-tracking measures but also IP-obfuscation through the Tor network. Sure, there are sites that won't serve content to the Tor network, but screw them!
LibreWolf on desktop—fennec on mobile (tho I should consider Mull, my history is already in Fennec). Back desktop is Brave—with backup mobile being Mulch + Fx Android Beta (to handle DRM). In the terminal, w3m picking up a new possible maintainer means it will stay my favorite.
I want to follow Ladybird, but man is that hype way overblown relative to where the project actually is & you should not trust leadership that locks communications to US-based, proprietary services (Discord + Microsoft GitHub).
When I‘m on an apple device (my phone or work mac) I use Safari. On any other device: Firefox. And if the website doesn’t work properly in either one of those, ungoogled chromium.
On desktop I use Mercury Browser - a Firefox fork - but I'm not sure how " privacy focused " it is other than that it's Firefox based
On Android I use Brave Browser , because it meets my needs , while it was good compared to other browsers in privacy tests , I still won't recommend it 100% for privacy for the following reason ( unless you're ok with changing some settings to make it more private ) :
If you care about your privacy , you can read this browser check series for both desktop and mobile ( in German , you might need a translator ) by security expert Kuketz , the rest of the browsers are linked in the same page
I've been using Kiwi for the last few years, as at the time Firefox didn't do extensions on mobile. It's Chromium based, and I've had no issues using it anywhere.
for something similar to edge, i’d recommend ungoogled chromium. it strips out all of the google garbage. the setup takes a bit of time to get extensions installed, but it’s smooth sailing after that.
if you’re wanting something new, there are many privacy-oriented forks of firefox that can get the job done. one of the common ones is librewolf, but i honestly just stick to normal firefox with ublock origin, container tabs, and noscript.
edit: if anything i said is wrong, please correct me 🙏