Browser De-Slop

cullumsmith 58 points 45 comments August 20, 2026
www.sacredheartsc.com · View on Hacker News

Discussion Highlights (15 comments)

crassus_ed

Or just use LibreWolf. I've been using it for quite a while now and it has been great.

scarylooking

“I wouldn’t know, since I use a real operating system.” aaaand stop reading there. No thanks.

xnx

One man's bloat is another man's feature. (Sidenote: Over/misuse of the word "slop")

blkhawk

I concur with the misuse of the word "slop". But this is almost exactly how i setup my browser anyway and since I only do that on once i am nor sure how useful this is actually... maybe for setting up systems for others?

purpleflame1257

"Allegedly, these policies are also supported on Windows via Group Policy and MacOS using plist files. I wouldn’t know, since I use a real operating system." Real 2006 Slashdot energy here. Very rare to see in the wild these days.

gampleman

Anyone know where to put the policy file on MacOS? And can you do this even on a corporate machine?

alance

The firefox bit has these: > Disables native privacy and anti-tracking features > Disables DNS-over-HTTPS Why?

OroPla

> Disables all extra functionality (Pocket Wasn't Pocket discontinued and no longer exists?

VCFundedGenYer

Don't use regular Firefox. Use Waterfox or LibreWolf which rip all this out with prejudice. Not worth the endless rat chase of disabling settings. As for Chromium browsers, none of them are safe.

mechazawa

> Disables DNS-over-HTTPS Why though?

rapatel0

Why DNS over HTTPS? Not sure if i'm missing something, but i don't consider privacy protection slopware.

rafram

Most of these are not good choices for most people. And "I use a real operating system" alongside a list of seven different non-obvious and seemingly arbitrary config locations is pretty funny.

hmokiguess

I have been using https://helium.computer/ as a sane default of ungoogled chromium and I like it a lot

MadameMinty

Slop. "I use a real operating system" but lists Chrome, as if that was any better in its own category; mentioning policies that are long dead (Cloud Print? Pocket? Really?) or harmless (DoH). Ironic.

Throwthrowbob

I use user.js to harden the browser settings but this is local to the user's account. It's good that someone is describing using policies. I ended up a bunch of trial and error while looking at copies of the prefs.js file in the browser profile folder to determine what settings correlate to settings in the browser, when I couldn't search for the feature.

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