Browsers and me, it’s a never-ending story. Early on, I switched from Internet Explorer to Mozilla Firefox and have pretty much stuck with it ever since. Every now and then, I’d venture out to Chrome, and briefly to Edge. For the past few weeks, I’ve been using Opera because its Workspaces offered an easy way to separate my personal and professional life.

But then I somehow stumbled upon Brave. A browser that had only been on my radar peripherally. I mostly scoffed at it, since it was mainly in the media for its built-in crypto wallet and its focus on Web 3.0. Both are topics I personally can’t do much with. I missed the boat on crypto, and to me, Web 3.0 is a buzzword without much added value. Content controlled by users? Ahem, I run my own blog here.

But one thing finally made me sit up and take notice: Vertical tabs. A feature I hadn’t used before. It’s also difficult, as most browsers don’t even offer a vertical tab bar. Firefox and Chrome can apparently do it with an extension, though not very elegantly. Edge has it built-in, but well, it’s Edge. Brave has it built-in natively, a bar on the left (or right) that can either be slim and show just the icons, or wider to provide more information. With a 21:9 monitor, you have significantly more space horizontally than vertically. Besides, most websites don’t even use the full width, so it’s wasted space anyway. Space for a tab bar.

Boom, downloaded Brave, installed it, and launched it. As always, the first thing is to go through the settings. Turn off Web 3.0 features, adjust the layout, and disable autofill. Then install the usual extensions and off we go. I left out uBlock Origin for testing, as Brave has an integrated ad blocker. It works very well, too. Oh, and the whole process all over again for a second profile. Work and personal life are separate again, excellent.

And what can I say? I’m really happy with Brave right now. All the Web 3.0 stuff can be disabled or hidden. The built-in AI is of limited use, at least for me it only wants to write in English by default. Otherwise, the browser’s GUI is pleasantly lean. The tabs on the side are still unfamiliar, and I often move the mouse to the top instead of the left edge. But I already love the feature!