Helium Browser
I've used many different browsers over the years. And for the most part there aren't too many discernible features when it comes to functionality.
Lately I've been seeing lots of stuff about Helium Browser. I've seen the same thing happen with Arc Browser, Zen Browser, etc., etc.
With me being highly susceptible to FOMO, I decided to take a look at it.
My previous browser was Vivaldi, which I was using because it had a lot of features. Did I use most of the features? No. But it worked for me, and my computer is particularly beefy, so I was fine with a more comprehensive browser experience.
So I head to their website, and I see that it's a very privacy-focused browser. Usually these sorts of browsers tend to be based on Firefox, so seeing that it was a Chromium-based browser, I was somewhat interested.
So I install the browser and open it up. I then sync all of my settings and bookmarks from Vivaldi. I start using the browser. And it feels really nice.
With Chromium browsers on Linux, I generally face some issues regarding graphics. Whether the fonts are weird, or the text scaling is off for certain things, or the context menu looks strange. But when it comes to this browser, I've had none of that. The browser is extremely fast, it doesn't get in your way, it uses screen real estate very well, and some issues that were present in every other Chromium browser I've used have disappeared.
I switched to Chromium-based browsers primarily because they seemed to work a lot better when it came to 3D acceleration. For example, I basically couldn't play GeoGuessr at all on a Firefox-based browser. I could only play it on a Chromium-based one. However, I did have issues regarding YouTube playback, but only when the video was fullscreen. There would be weird white graphical artifacts (?) that would flicker on the screen every so often. That doesn't happen with this browser for some reason.
And of course, one of the biggest reasons why you would want to use such a browser is how serious they are about your privacy. It comes preinstalled with Ublock Origin, which is great. They offer great support for add-ons and protect your privacy when sending requests to the Google Chrome store through their own Helium Services. Thus making it so that Google can't track your downloads or target ads using this data. They have support for a bunch of different bangs. Meaning you can type !w in your browser, and it will search that query in Wikipedia. Or !gh for GitHub or !chatgpt for ChatGPT, plus another 10,000+ options. Oh, and they also support split view as well, which is really nice.
Honestly quite surprised at how nice the browser is. It doesn't try to sell you anything, and it also doesn't lose out on any functionality as a result of its privacy focus. I like it.