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Waterfox pushes back against Mozilla's AI vision and advocates for privacy-first browsing
(alternativeto.net)
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this post was submitted on 22 Dec 2025
289 points (99.7% liked)
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Any reasons should I use Waterfox over Librewolf?
Let me do the best summary I can.
Waterfox is owned by a company and they claim it's a good thing. Librewolf is community project which I think it's a good thing since passionate community means longer before project is poisoned and we have to move on to some fork.
Librewolf will delete all cookies and browsing data when you close the browser making all sessions effectively incognito. Waterfox gives you convinience that you can stay signed in in the websites you frequent (I think it's disadvantage, but of course it's less convinient to sign in every time)
Librewolf includes ublock origin by default, waterfox you have to add it on your own.
Librewolf default search engine is duckduckgo.com while waterfox has changed defaults, currently they are on startpage.com
Librewolf doesn't add any tab navigation stuff but waterfox adds tree tabs by default (you can do this with add ons on Librewolf)
Librewolf has no telemetry ot mozzila servers or Google Safe browsing, so no Firefox sync or pockets feature. Waterfox retains some telemetry to Mozilla servers, I don't recall if they do Google safe browsing or not.
Librewolf project doesn't provide binaries so you either compile it yourself or you stay dependent on one of the community members to make the binaries for you. Waterfox gives you a direct binary for which waterfox itself is responsible and you only have a single sign certificate.
You decide what is your usevase and what makes sense for you. My opinion is I like Librewolf because it starts very private and I can add some convinience features as I like and that i am confortable sacrificing privacy for. And I have trusted sources for binaries.
Same page as me then. Corpos suck, prefer the "opt in" model, etc.
Waterfox is essentially firefox minus AI and tracking.
Librewolf is essentially firefox minus everything but the bare minimum needed for web browsing.
Both support addons and are privacy focused but librewolf is a bit more "inconvenient" in the name of enhanced privacy.
Or from the other point of view
Librewolf is more secure and has less exposed tracking vectors. Librewolf stays focused on privacy and doesn't make compromises for "convinience".
Yup, thats the thing I already said.
Made the switch a couple days ago. It’s just FireFox but snappier which I like.
You should try Librewolf, add a password manager to it, and it's golden.
I literally did that on waterfox lol
Snappier? I hate that 😭
I switched to Waterfox recently. I really like it. It actually seems to work more consistently than Firefox did.
Is it available in apt and fdroid?
Okay you guys are selling me
For some reason I never put an ad blocker on Firefox. It was so easy on Waterfox, I've been AD free for a week and I am in LOVE
Edit, Down vote why? Lmao because I never Ad blocked on Firefox? I'm a noob bros. Can't hold me dowwwwnnnnn