Zen Browser Review

I would like to make it clear that the below thoughts and opinions are of my own. This is what I have observed in my search for my next browser.

Backstory #

Recently, I have been hearing about this new BLAZING FAST beautiful web browser based on Firefox. I recently moved from Chrome based browsers to Firefox when Chrome removed the uBlock Origin extension. This browser peaked my interest as I hated the way Firefox looks out of the box. If you are unaware, I use linux with i3 and I am constantly changing how my system looks and feels to make it better. Firefox always felt like an eye sore to me. I tried some plugins that didn’t work too well so when I heard about Zen, I figured I would give it a shot.

First Impressions #

My first impression of Zen was a bit good and a bit bad. The first thing I did was connect it to Mozilla Sync in order to get my extensions moved over. The Zen developers left this feature in which I believe is a huge plus especially when it comes to migrating users from Firefox to Zen.

Zen initially looked a lot like Opera GX to me. I never used the Opera browser, however, friends of mine have and this seemed like it took some inspiration from that project. The default colors in Zen look nice but it didn’t fit in with my Tokyo Night obsession. I took a look at the themes page in the add-on settings and to my delight, I saw a Tokyo Night theme. After enabling it, my screen turned bright with no seemingly easy way to make it dark. I went to their website and installed the Catpuccin theme as it was the closest to Tokyo Night as I could find. Zen does have a tool to easily help you create themes, however, they are not accepting new themes currently.

Tab Line #

I enjoy how compact the tab line is on the browser. It was upsetting to see no close button on the tab line, however, I did notice that extending the tab line would allow for you to close without having to right-click > close tab. I prefer a close button as it’s faster, convenient and easy. I am someone to opens and closes tabs a lot so it would have been nice to have this feature. I thought about looking into making a plugin to add this but when looking at their site, I realized there is a plugin to add a collapsed tab close button to your browser already. I am now using this and I am enjoying it.

Workspaces #

Workspaces is an experimental feature so I won’t rip into it too much. I enjoy the idea of having workspaces and I am someone who will move from working on a project to researching things for my personal life, things for work, games etc. I tend to keep those tabs open for multiple days so this is a nice way for my browser to not become a mess. One thing I did notice is if you have two windows open and change your workspace, it does not change for all windows. I can see why this would be appealing for some people but I would enjoy seeing a setting in the future that will allow you to decide how the workspaces behave with multiple windows.

Plugins #

The plugins this section is referring to are the ones found on the zen website This is a feature where the community can make something to enhance the user experience with the browser. Everything in here is optional but they do have a nice selection of plugins made by the community. They seem to be themes (at least that’s what zen is calling them) and mostly just effect the UI. I call them plugins as they essentially add more features like the collapsed tab close button mentioned above. From what I can tell, the only way to browse these are to go to the zen website. It would be nice to see something added into the settings to browse there or at least a link somewhere that makes it easier to get to.

Side View #

I’m not sure what the name of this feature is as either the tool tip for it does not exist or mine is not working. This is the feature that allows you to open a webpage on the side of your browser to view the mobile version of a site. This seems to be aimed toward visiting a social media website and scroll through your feed without having a dedicated tab and still being able to see another tab on your screen. I have not used this feature extensively, however, I can see some uses when scrolling through mastodon or reddit. I enjoy how when signing into something on a tab, it transfers to the side view or vice versa but when I was logging in with my password manager, it did not prompt me to login. I’m not sure if this is on the browser side or the side of my password manager, however, I did notice that it seems like uBlock Origin is not blocking trackers on these websites. I tested this by opening a new tab and manually starting uBlock Origin (it’s off by default on a new tab). I waited with reddit open and nothing had been blocked. I opened reddit in a tab and as of writing this, uBlock Origin has blocked 22 ads/trackers. I’m not sure this is the most scientific way to view this but I plan on mostly using this for mastodon anyway.

Conclusion #

This review is beginning to become lengthy so I will be ending it here. What do I think of the browser? The browser seems to be unfinished but that’s not a bad thing. Much of the browser is polished minus a couple issues I ran into. I can see myself using this in the future. I do not have extensive knowledge of this browser and have not used it extensively. I will likely continue to use it for a while. That being said it desperately needs a Tokyo Night theme. Maybe I will make one when they allow us to make themes again. I do enjoy the use of a flatpak installation as you can control what the software can do on your machine a lot easier utilizing a program like flatseal.

Find the Zen Browser here