Ask Paul: August 21 ⭐

Happy Friday! We're in upstate New York for a long weekend, so let's get this party started with some great reader questions.
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🌎 I'm just browsing
NickTech asks:

Paul, I’ve seen you comment on switching between web browsers to test them out. Do you have a specific routine for setting up a new browser install like you do with fresh Windows installs? Are there add-ons you install every time you configure a browser?

I configure most web browsers similarly, but there are a few differences depending on the app.

Microsoft Edge will automatically sign in to my Microsoft account (MSA) if I used that to sign in to Windows, so I let that happen. But I specifically say no to all three of the options you step through when you initially configure the browser (the Chrome/Google account settings sync, "Make your Microsoft experience more useful to you," and so on). If I sign in to Windows with a local account, I typically ignore Edge so I don't bother to sign in there.
With other browsers that have an account for sync purposes, I do sign into those accounts. So, as with Edge, you get all your extensions synced and whatever other settings. This is true for Mozilla Firefox, Opera, Vivaldi, Chrome, etc.
Brave doesn't have an account of any kind, so it uses a sync system that I really like instead, but with the same effect: The extensions and whatever other settings sync.
Helium, which I've been using a lot recently, has no account and no way to sync settings. I was manually installing extensions on that browser until it occurred to me I could just let it pull over the settings from some other browser during initial setup, and since Edge is usually in there, I let it use that. And that brings over most, but not all, extensions, so I have to install a few manually.
Brave is safe from tracking out of the box, so I don't need the same extension-based protections there I use elsewhere. But generally speaking, I install some combination of Privacy Badger, uBlock Origin, and Adblock Plus. I always check the browser configuration against Cover Your Tracks to make sure it's blocking tracking ads and invisible trackers and has a randomized fingerprint. This is job one to me.

I install Proton Pass (password and passkey manager), Instapaper (read later), Dark Reader (dark mode), LanguageTool (spell/grammar checking), and Bonjourr (New Tab page) in every web browser. I will install Google Translate as/if needed. I have a custom Bonjourr configuration saved offline, so if it doesn't come through with the browser sync, I will load it manually.

That's most of it, I think. I don't use any in-browser AI per se. I don't see AI web browsers as being a big deal anymore. And I don't use any non-standard configurations (vertical tabs, etc.) for the most part, though I try to test new features in each browser as they...