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The lack of "handholding" is most likely due to the browser being geared towards "power users," and to people who value choice when it comes to privacy focused (or, in Waterfox's specific case, "ethical") browsers. Power users may be thankful for this, but the average user could be a little offput. Like many other desktop browsers, there was no guide for set up before using Waterfox. My immediate first impression is that it looked like a Firefox clone.Īnd it makes since. Once the installation finished up, Waterfox launched very quickly. These requirements slightly differ across different operating systems: There are minimum system requirements for running this browser. On mobile platforms, it seems that Waterfox was available on Android, but appears that development has since stalled. Waterfox is available on Windows, macOS, and specified Linux distros. Granted, some might say that near back-to-back acquisitions of independent and privacy-focused projects seems a little out of place. However, so far, it appears that System1 hasn't done anything overt to warrant being "untrustworthy" - outside of being a for-profit advertising company. As noted previously, it is also the same company that purchased private search engine, Startpage (ext), sometime in Q4 of 2018. System1 is an advertising company that takes a "privacy-focused" position in what it does. Waterfox was acquired by System1 in December 2019. This review will focus on Waterfox Current (G3). Nowadays, it seems Waterfox's biggest draws are still its speed and its support for legacy plugins (ext) - especially those that are no longer supported since the introduction of Firefox Quantum in 2016.Ĭurrently, Waterfox comes in two flavors: Waterfox Current and Waterfox Classic. To me, it seems to just be a game of semantics, but I digress. However, in doing all of this, its goal was to be an "ethical browser," and you can reasonably argue that this makes it a privacy focused browser. Interestingly, Waterfox never took a definitive "privacy browser stance." While it did aim to strip Mozilla's telemetry and other somewhat questionably default features, Waterfox was primarily built for speed.

Even Firefox, from which Waterfox was forked, only officially supported 32-bit back then. Waterfox initially gained a lot of traction because, at the time, it was one of the only browsers available for 圆4 bit systems. While it has received contributions from multiple developers over the years, the main driving force for maintaining the project seemed to be the founder himself. Waterfox was a project started in 2011 by Alex Kontos. Nonexistent mobile support (this may be a con for some people).Still needs about:config tweaks found in Mozilla Firefox to be a more "true" privacy browser.Bought by analytics/adverising company, System1, which is the same company that bought search engine StartPage.