I’m a Firefox kid. Ever since the Firefox browser came onto the market as an alternative to the then-dominant Internet Explorer, I’ve primarily used Mozilla’s browser. Even though it’s had its ups and downs throughout its history, it remains the browser that best meets my needs to this day.

But a new job brings not only new devices but also new impressions. One feature I noticed with some of my colleagues was tab groups. Firefox doesn’t offer this, not even through an extension. This is partly because extensions are now heavily restricted and can barely interact with the actual browser anymore. More secure, but also more limited. I liked the old, powerful extensions.

At least this feature prompted me to look beyond my usual choices again. Chrome was out of the question, of course, even though tab groups are a Chromium feature. Edge too, as I use Linux for a reason. Opera is now owned by a Chinese company, so my choice fell on Brave. It’s not without controversy either, but I had a good impression of it. It’s supposed to be secure, it’s based on Chromium, and I just ignored the extra crypto features. So I used the browser for several weeks.

And you know what looks practical but isn’t so cool in reality? Tab groups. Managing them is fiddly, and they aren’t saved either. So every time you restart the browser or the system, you have to reopen all the pages and reassign them. And all that just so I can show and hide my work and personal tabs. For simplicity’s sake, I ended up creating bookmarks. And you know what? With those, I can just as easily open and close tabs quickly. Besides, Brave, and the Chromium foundation it’s built on, just isn’t for me. Too much stuff, too cluttered, too Google.

To this day, Google still can’t manage to build beautiful, lean software. Gmail is functionally great, but try changing a setting. Android is similar. Firefox is much further ahead in this regard. Many may not like the new interface, but after a few weeks with Brave, it just seems much cleaner and more coherent to me.

In the end, it’s clear to me again why I use Firefox. It’s lean, it’s tidy, and it offers almost everything I need. As it turns out, tab groups are not one of those things. I just prefer to start with a clean session and stick to my bookmarks.