2024-04-27
A brief exploration of alternative browsers on iPad
A few months ago I started encountering a bit of bugginess with Safari on the iPad. Nothing major but annoying enough that I thought I'd look around at the various browser options. With Safari as the standard here's a short summary what I've found thus far. I'll note, there are other browsers not listed here but I've not used them enough to form an opinion.
Key features:
| Features | Safari | Firefox | iCab | Vivaldi | Edge | Orion |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Extensions | Yes | No | Yes | No | No | Yes |
| Ad Blocking | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| YouTube Ad Blocking | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | Yes |
| Reader View | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | No | Yes |
| Multiple app windows | Yes | No | No | No | Yes | No |
| Darkmode | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Bookmarks Bar | Yes | No | Yes | No | No | Yes |
| Sync between devices | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
I'll start with iCab which is notable as the most customizable, "power user" browser. Really, iCab is amazing in terms of the available customizations. Unlike every other in the list, including Apple's Safari, it has a customizable toolbar! It even has a built in, per-site RSS reader. This doesn't do multiple site RSS like most dedicated RSS apps but rather, with a tap it quickly shows the RSS headlines for the site currently being viewed. It's neat and handy for Indy news sites but it doesn't work for some of the biggest news sites where it would be most useful to cut through the auto-playing videos, etc. But it work very well for smaller indy sites where it's an interesting option for quickly showing the RSS articles of a site one is on. It might be a useful complement to a full RSS reader app for sites I don't want to subscribe to but just occasionally visit. And it's possible to create a folder of RSS feed bookmarks that allows the user to jump straight to a specific site feed.
Only one browser, Edge, supports multiple windows! It seems like a strange omission in the four other browsers and, for me, it rules them out as being set as a new default. Both Edge and Vivaldi are lacking far too many features to be a browser I would use as a default or even use on occasional alternative and both were deleted from my iPad.
Orion, iCab and Firefox are all very useable with most of the features I need with two exceptions: the already mentioned lack of support for multiple windows and the lack of Shortcuts support. I have a shortcut I use many times a day to pull the url and text selection on a Safari page into the clipboard. This doesn't seem to be an option with any browser other than Safari. But all three continue to work very well to block adds on YouTube so I'll keep them around for that as well as to use on the other rare occasions that Safari glitches. A few specific notes on each:
- Orion looks very similar to Safari and has extension support.
- iCab, for all of it's amazing features, looks and feels a bit clunky. But it's also the most outside the box in what it offers and will always have a place on my iPad.
- Firefox has a tabs on top design which I like but it lacks an option to show a bookmarks bar, a big miss for me.