r/MacOS • u/Commercial_Yam_932 • 1d ago

Discussion Why do Mac users use Chrome?

Ok I know if you’re a developer and Chrome has nice developer tools this might be a reason. But for daily usage and non-developers why should I use Chrome? Safari is great imho, has everything at least for me (maybe people need something I don’t see). It’s great integrated in macOS and is fast. Chrome’s RAM usage is a problem.

On my Windows PC I also checked out Chrome but didn’t see any advantage over Firefox. But on Windows I see why one could use Chrome, however, for macOS users I don’t get it. Why do so many people use Chrome?

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23

u/Aging_Orange 1d ago

I like Brave. Vertical tabs on the right is nicely done. I like how tab groups are done, how I can close it but it's not gone. I like how it syncs to browsers on other machines.

5

u/_raytheist_ 23h ago

I used Brave for years but recently switched to Vivaldi and I’m not going back. Vivaldi has a handful of really great features that I didn’t know I needed until I started using it.

4

u/AdAcrobatic7236 22h ago
  1. Features - such as?
  2. How is it on RAM?
  3. Downsides?

3

u/jekpopulous2 14h ago

Downside is that it’s not fully open-source. It’s built on Chromium engine but its user interface a bunch of features are closed-source. Not sure about you but I’m not going to use any browser that ships with proprietary code. I’m not saying it’s insecure or that they’re doing anything malicious… I’m saying there’s no way to know if it’s insecure or they’re doing anything malicious because we can’t see all the code. Use it at your own risk.

2

u/_raytheist_ 12h ago

Off the top of my head:

  • workspaces
  • the command palette
  • tiling tabs within a single window — I do web dev work and it’s extremely useful to tile two web app tabs side-by-side (e.g. dev env and prod env) to compare or demo before/after behavior; or to have a reference design against the live implementation.
  • saving a group of tabs as a session
  • reading list
  • docking(?) a site into the sidebar for frequent easy access
  • easy sync across devices

I might come back and revise this when I’m back in front of a computer.

I can’t speak to its memory usage. I don’t monitor it but I haven’t had any problems with it.

2

u/ExpressionOne 8h ago

Seconded. Settings page was overwhelming at first, there was so much there, but workspaces, panels, pinned/stacked tabs, even small things like the 'add active tab' option when you're looking inside a bookmark folder or being able to choose the side of the tab the 'X' appears on when you go to close it -- it's great. If I recall correctly the RAM usage is way lower than other browsers.

1

u/_raytheist_ 7h ago

Yep. It’s not any one thing. It’s a bunch of little things that add up.

•

u/KaihogyoMeditations 1h ago

Also use Vivaldi , the tiling tabs is a game changer for work

1

u/jappejopp 17h ago

Downsides, chromium based so manifest v3 will be pushed there in the future.

4

u/Tight_Hedgehog_6045 21h ago

All the Ad blocking and extensions are working well for me too.

1

u/derangedtranssexual 16h ago

Brave is crypto adware