Browser compartmentalisation...

[Don B. Cilly]

...may be a bit of a mouthful, but personally I find it quite useful.
I use:
- Firefox for most everything. It's discreet and does not sell my habits to surveillance capitalists.
- Chrome to play golf on WGT, Gmail and shopping. Golf because it's really finicky, and Chrome deals with it. Gmail because it's Google anyway. Shopping because... even though Firefox is reasonably discreet, shops are not. So that stuff stays in there and doesn't ooze out.
- Opera for Facebook (rarely) and Twitter (even more rarely).. And pretty much nothing else. If anything else, it's got a VPN that actually works.
So that stuff (social) stays in there too.

I find it helps to keep the annoyance... well, at least compartmentalised

[jglen490]

For me, one browser to rule them all

[SpecialEd]

For me, one browser to rule them all

+1

BUT, it's always a good idea to have another browser or two around for testing.

[deanr]

I've actually been trying to 'compartmentalise browsers' of late so quite interesting to see this thread.

The browser I use for work needs to be Chromium-based so I'm told by my employers but I recently switched to Chromium from Chrome in the hope that I won't be feeding Google so much of my private data. But, like the OP I use Gmail anyway - so I'm not entirely sure if this makes much sense. I have started to use Duck Duck Go, however, as the default search engine although I do switch back to Google on occasion when I get frustrated by poor search results. As much as anyone can criticise Google it is a superior search engine in my experience.

Firefox is my go to for Netflix and I'm trying to use it more for other general purposes - online shopping and other non-work related stuff. I'm slowly getting used to it but whenever I run into trouble I have to rather 'Google' how to do something which I really have no patience for. Chromium/Chrome are so much more intuitive I find. I find bookmarking in Firefox particularly troublesome and the amount of time I've lost trying to show the bookmarks bar...grrr.

Firefox does appear to be faster at times on my machine though and visually crisper in some ways. This might just be a trick of the imagination though.

I liked Brave for a while when I was playing around with it. Very clean. But then I re-installed my OS and couldn't get Brave to run. Hey ho.

[Don B. Cilly]

I certainly agree on DDG. A lot of things, it won't find. So we are stuck with Google in a way... which is the main point of compartmentalisation.
See, I buy something say on Ebay or Amazon - very invasive/aggressive practices they have - if I use Chrome/ium I get ads and suggestions (where adblock doesn't work) for the same exact product I just bought all over the place.
If I use FF, I don't. They don't talk to each other. Opera used to talk to it, now not so much it seems.
Still, I don't use Gmail on FF. Just Chrome. Which I also use for Amazon and eBay, and pretty much nothing else. So that stuff stays in there.

Firefox, the bookmark bar is as simple as right-clicking on the Tabs bar, right at the top, and toggle it on and off. But then. Everything take a bit of getting used to.
I use it for more than 90% of the stuff.
It's better for videos too. With my old video (Intel) card, for example, Chrome and Opera would freeze full-screen, FF not a problem. With the new one, they work... but I still don't use them really.
I find FF reasonably discreet, Chrome blatantly invasive, and Opera... I'm not quite sure, I don't use it much.

As to using Gmail not making much sense... on Gmail I have a"generic" one and a couple of "spamyersister" ones. But I also have a "proper" email account, and a ProtonMail one as well ;·) ... for which I use FF.
So one compartmentalises that too... which is something pretty much everyone does anyway, I guess.

[kc1di]

I use opera as my main browser and FF & Chromium on occasion. I'm just use to Opera not other real reason for using it. Like the way it's laid out. To each his own

[WWDERW]

For me, one browser to rule them all

This is me. Firefox is my preferred browser. Don't have any others installed. At one time, before I could get Netflix to work on FF, I did have Chrome installed as well as FF and used Chrome exclusively for Netflix. Not so much anymore.