Picking the right web browser is no easy task, but most people just stick with what they know—which is why Google Chrome is the world’s most popular browser. But it’s time for you to leave Chrome’s memory-sapping ways behind and embrace something new and much better.
1
Zen Makes Browsing Simpler
One of the first things you’ll notice when you start using Zen Browser is just how much simpler your web browsing becomes. Instead of Chrome’s cluttered interface that crams everything into horizontal tabs, Zen uses a vertical sidebar that further divides your tabs into workspaces.
Compared to Chrome’s tab groups, workspaces in Zen let you create completely different browsing environments with individual themes and tabs to keep your work tabs separate from your personal ones. If you work on multiple tasks at once, you can neatly organize all the tabs you need in separate workspaces and switch between them at the press of a button.
Tabs are further divided into three categories in workspaces:
- Essentials: These tabs appear at the top of your sidebar and remain consistent across workspaces, but can be workspace-specific as well. You can use them for your most commonly visited websites.
- Pinned tabs: Workspace-specific tabs that appear between Essentials and regular tabs. Use these work-specific websites/tools.
- Regular tabs: The usual browser tabs you’d deal with throughout the day.
This approach might seem weird at first, but it’ll save you a lot of hassle in the long run. This is also a better approach than saving bookmarks in Chrome’s bookmark tabs, as you don’t have to fish around for a specific bookmark for the task at hand. Switch to the right workspace, and all your relevant tabs are ready to go. This also reduces the number of open tabs you have to deal with, as both essentials and pinned tabs don’t take up space among your regular tabs.
Zen’s design focuses on a more calm approach to the internet, as inspired by Arc, the Chrome replacement that never lived up to its potential. Apart from workspaces, this includes other features such as Glance, which can open tabs in a temporary tab if you need to glance over some information, or the Compact mode, where the browser UI hides itself, leaving nothing but the website in view.
This results in a significantly less overwhelming browsing experience with little between you and the work you’re trying to do. You can browse the internet just as fast and without any distractions, without having to look at cluttered toolbars and having to fish for tabs.
2
It Protects Your Privacy
Chrome has built an empire on harvesting user data for targeted ads. Zen, on the other hand, doesn’t collect any telemetry or personal data and doesn’t allow third-party trackers or analytic tools to operate within the browser.
Chrome might be the most popular browser on the market, but it’s a nightmare for privacy. Chrome and other Chromium browsers have been leaking your web history for over two decades, not to mention the tracking and data collection that goes on even in the browser’s incognito mode. You can continue using Chrome while protecting your privacy somewhat, but switching is the way to go if you’re looking to protect your digital activity.
Instead of using Chromium, Zen bases itself on Firefox, a web browser known for its privacy-first approach. Additionally, it strips Firefox telemetry completely from the core and only uses a few external connections at startup to those required for essential security updates.
Zen also has built-in tracking protection that blocks social media trackers, fingerprints, and ads that Chrome might allow. Additionally, while Chrome requires third-party extensions like uBlock Origin (which Google is actively undermining with the Manifest V3 update), Zen includes this by default. This results in faster page loads that don’t consume as much data and aren’t crammed with ads.
Last but not least, the browser is open source. This means you can head over to the official Zen Browser Github repository and check the code out for yourself, and even contribute to the development process if you’re so inclined.
3
Almost Unlimited Customizability
Chrome does offer customization options, but these essentially boil down to picking a theme from the Chrome Web Store and arranging a few toolbar buttons. Zen’s customization options make Chrome look primitive by comparison.
Each workspace you make can have a unique background color that changes how the browser looks. You can add a gradient, multiple colors, and noise to the background to make sure that each workspace is visually unique and striking.
Then come Zen Mods. These mods are community-created features that can add themes, animations, fix paddings and shadows, change the way tabs appear in the sidebar, how the search function works, and a ton of other smaller visual tweaks across the browser.
You can even customize what interface elements you want to see when browsing and where specific buttons should be. If the top and side bars feel distracting, just hit a shortcut to enter Compact mode, and suddenly your browser is nothing but the website you’re on. You can also merge the two bars into one for an extremely compact look if that’s more your style.
Finally, if you really want to take browser customization to the next level, Zen supports live CSS editing through userChrome.css files. This gives you the ability to modify virtually any visual element of the browser interface. It does take a little bit of figuring out and skill to know what you’re doing, but you can get the browser looking exactly the way you want. Zen’s customization is only limited by your imagination and skill.
4
Snappy Performance
Chrome is well-known as a memory hog, especially on older systems. However, this performance isn’t going to be visible on synthetic benchmarks.
I used Chrome for well over a decade before finally giving in to Microsoft’s propaganda and switching to Edge. And then, when Arc came around, I went on a quest to find the perfect browser for Windows, and the results were shocking.
Chrome will outperform Zen in almost all synthetic benchmarks, but that difference in score largely comes down to the underlying engine powering the browser. In day-to-day usage, Zen is much faster and fluid. Especially considering the features and customization options it packs in.
When it comes to site loading times and general browsing performance, both browsers are on par. There have been rumors of Google throttling Firefox or Firefox-based browsers from accessing its services, and that will be true to some extent. However, across the wider internet, you’re not going to have any complaints from Zen.
Where Zen really shines is on older or less powerful hardware. Unlike Chrome, it doesn’t immediately eat up all your system memory, which means you can run more tabs. This also reduces the time spent waiting for tabs to load into memory every time you switch between them.
Zen is also more careful with your PC’s resources. Chrome’s background processes can continue eating up CPU, memory, and network resources when the browser is minimized. This leads to faster battery drain in laptops and sluggish system performance overall. Zen runs with significantly less overhead.
The result is a snappy browser that doesn’t require tons of system memory to run. You can browse the internet, then minimize the browser and use your computer for other tasks without having to worry about performance. It can take a little bit longer than Chrome on first launch for reasons I’m yet to figure out.
5
Updates Are Frequent
Chrome is not a slow-updating browser by any means, and Google does a great job of ensuring it rushes its security updates to keep the browser safe. Zen, however, is in a different league.
You get to see updates come out every few weeks instead of months. New features arrive regularly, and the browser continues to evolve with user feedback. Part of the reason why updates are so frequent is that Zen is currently in beta, and updates will eventually slow down as the browser reaches a more final state.
Regardless, Firefox compatibility and security updates generally arrive within 72 hours of Mozilla’s releases. That’s significantly faster than Chrome, where you might have to spend weeks waiting for a security update or bug fix.
There are also nightly builds and the Zen Twilight branch that provides new features before public release for you to test out. These do come at the cost of browser stability, though, so be warned before diving into uncharted waters.
If you’re part of the community behind Zen, you have a say in the direction the browser is headed. One look at the Zen Browser subreddit and you’ll realize that it’s a genuinely community-driven project that prioritizes its users over profit.
As mentioned before, the browser is open-source, meaning there’s complete transparency in the development process. Decisions for new features, security implementations, and feature priorities—every decision is documented for everyone to see. On the contrary, Google’s Chromium may be open-source, but the browser’s development is entirely controlled by Google and its business interests.
The theme and mod ecosystem further contribute to this. Users can create and share their own nuances for the browser, which means you can have entirely different browsing experiences varying between users. If you want to browse the web in a specific manner, chances are Zen will scratch that itch for you.
This reliance on community support instead of advertising revenue keeps Zen’s development focused on its users. Since the model isn’t based on collecting or selling user data, privacy and user-friendly design always come first.
There are a lot of browsers that do some things better than others. I’m not going to claim that Zen is perfect, but it’s as good a browser as I’ve seen. Good enough for me to say you need to delete your old browser and switch to this one instead.
