The modern logo reminds me of Microsoft Word for Mac 2010 :(
Compute/resource monetization is the one after all these years that has done the best at replacing ads as a means of monetization for users, and it requires a very intelligent scheduling system + ethical ecosystem to work (most have just tried running crypto miners that cost users more electricity than they earn).
Librewolf is, to me, the way better alternative as this is really in the FOSS mindset : a tool for everyone to use and by anyone to contribute. Seeing their plateform alone (Lemmy/Matrix/Codeberg, they also have a reddit community it seems) you can already see this is an other world than Waterwolf's bluesky/reddit/github. To be fair I can understand the SNS part but the github is a big redflag to me.
As usual I can see people that are very probably sincere in their goals not realizing the way they are going will lead to the usual enshitification: company focus, brave dependency, etc.
I note that Waterfox seems to legally originate from UK and it is refreshing to have an ecosystem that is not centralized in 1 country : for the sake of everyone it is better not to rely to much on 1 legislator (see age verification for instance).
(Adds AI that needs 7 about:config entries to disable, until users roast it enough that they add an off switch.)
> Waterfox: And we still don’t have AI in the browser. That hasn’t changed. The browser’s job is to load web pages, keep your data private, and get out of the way. It seems other browsers have forgotten that.
At some point I think we should just redirect the Firefox funding to Waterfox.
I need to move back to waterfox again...
> Waterfox’s approach of allowing text ads on the default search partner page is our own decision for sustainability
"Sustainability" indeed.
> The original text implied Brave special cases ads on their search partner’s page - they don’t. Brave blocks third party ads on all websites by default, regardless of any partnership, and offers an additional aggressive mode that blocks first party ads as well. Waterfox’s approach of allowing text ads on the default search partner page is our own decision for sustainability,
I would like to stress on the last sentence:
Waterfox’s approach of allowing text ads on the default search partner page is our own decision for sustainability
So basically they are permitting ads from their paying partners.The upside of Librewolf being a community project is also IMO its downside - there isn't any accountability and with the current climate around the world becoming more hostile to online services, I think governance is hugely important, which is why I've tried to collate everything as much as I can: https://www.waterfox.com/docs/policies/company-information/
At the end of the day, if something goes wrong, at least with Waterfox I can be held accountable.
I use Waterfox on Linux and one of the things I like the most is that it works with the global menu bar in Unity, Xfce and so on. LibreWolf, in my testing, does not. My experiment with it ended there, TBH. (Neither did Floorp.)
Hopping between Waterfox and Firefox is easy because Waterfox works with Mozilla Sync. I think LibreWolf might not, and I have read somewhere that it disables the Mozilla password manager.
I find Waterfox UI and interop better, so I use it.
Librewolf may be even more private, but the poor UI was a deal-breaker for me. YMMV.
System1 is a search syndication company. Their business is contextual ads on search results - no PII, no tracking profiles, no behavioural targeting. It's functionally the same model as DuckDuckGo. If I'd sold to DDG, I don't think anyone would've batted an eyelid.
I get it, the timing (privacy browser sold to company with "ad" in its description) looked terrible in a headline and I take responsibility for not communicating it better at the time, which I feel like wouldn't have led to such a massive furor.
5Y ago:
https://www.theregister.com/2021/11/04/waterfox_firefox_fork...
Last year:
https://www.theregister.com/2025/12/18/firefox_no_ai_alterna...
This year:
Rather than support for XPI (which is just the packaging for Firefox webextensions), the current version of Waterfox does still support bootstrapped extensions - in theory anyone can still write one, with access to all the privileged JavaScript APIs typically not accessible to MV2/MV3 webextensions.
It's not widely used though, there are two repos I'm aware of that take advantage of this:
https://github.com/xiaoxiaoflood/firefox-scripts/tree/master...
Firefox has already done so to google, and when a fork is big enough, they certainly will hear the siren's call.
This is basically the only potential way I can keep this going, even then there may not be much uptake, but it's a hail Mary.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47553048
Would either WF or LW fix that? Is it true?
> We partner with adMarketplace, Yelp and AccuWeather to provide sponsored suggestions that enhance your browsing experience with helpful, context-based information.
And if you leave Firefox for a while you get the "welcome back" bar that lets you ... uninstall ublock with one click before you've realised it.
Waterfox has text ads on the default search page based on your search query, not based on tracking you [2]. And it's really easy to turn off.
[1] https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/firefox-suggest?as=u&ut... and https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/sponsor-privacy?as=u&ut...
[2] https://www.startpage.com/privacy-please/startpage-articles/...
But charging $5 / $10 for basically what StartPage does (to the best of my understanding) is going to be a tough pitch either way. Out of interest, what would the pricing for the Google API look like, if you had no other costs involved?
You must be one of those guys who reads Philip Morris “articles” on the benefits of smoking and concludes there’s no evidence for harm.
On the Cookie Banner Reduction page[1] the section titled "Turn Cookie Banner Reduction on or off" talks about settings which don't exist (at least in the latest portable version 6.6.7 from Portapps.io). There is no option to block cookie banners in all windows.
[1] https://www.waterfox.com/support/cookie-banner-reduction/#tu...
The only real mitigation is being selective about which extensions you install and what permissions you grant them (even then, ownership of extensions change hands, updates can change what they do... it's a never ending battle really).
What am I missing?
I've mentioned in another comment, that I've tried other ways such as with subscription paid services, but unfortunately there's nowhere near enough traction for it to be sustainable.
Also bare in mind Waterfox currently comes with nothing, so this is just an extra layer of protection.
2011-2014

Fifteen years ago today, I posted a thread on the Overclock.net forums. I was sixteen, I had an HP Compaq TC4400 that I’d convinced my parents would “improve my school work”, and I was frustrated that Firefox didn’t have an official 64-bit build. So I compiled one myself, called it Waterfox, stuck it on SourceForge and went back to my A levels.
Within a week it had 50,000 downloads, completely unexpected. Frustratingly, being on an island in the Mediterranean meant there was no support network or anyone to turn to with regards to “what’s next”. Had I been stateside, with the infrastructure and institutional knowledge of “tech”, who knows - I might’ve had a guiding hand on how to manage something like this and work with the momentum. But alas, I would have to learn a lot of painful lessons myself.
Fast forward to today, 15 years later, and Waterfox is still here. So am I, albeit a bit older and significantly more tired. At best estimates, Waterfox probably has around 1M monthly active users.
If you go and look at that original OCN thread, it’s a very different world. People are talking about Silverlight support, MSVCR100.dll errors, and Peacekeeper benchmark scores. Someone asks for a 64-bit Chromium build and the thread title gets updated with every new Firefox version, all the way up to 56.0.2.
Originally, and under the username MrAlex, I was only trying to earn enough forum reputation so I could trade and buy second hand PC parts. I didn’t have a plan and I certainly didn’t have a business model. I just thought it was cool that you could take someone else’s source code, compile it with some changes, and end up with something different. Open source is a wonderful thing when you’re sixteen and don’t know anything about the software development lifecycle, yearning for the mines knowledge.
You can scour the internet, read this blog or view the media carousel at the bottom for then until now, but the short version: Waterfox grew - a lot - over 25 million lifetime downloads, and that figure is from calculations about seven years ago so the real number is certainly higher. I went to university, studying Electronics Engineering at York before a masters in Software Engineering at Oxford. I tried to start a charitable search engine, which failed as badly run startups tend to do. Ecosia reached out and something nice happened - Waterfox users helped plant over 350,000 trees in a single year.
Then System1 came along. I joined them, served as VP of Engineering, and helped scale the browser engineering team through a NYSE IPO - a genuine education, though companies change and focus shifts.
So I took Waterfox back under BrowserWorks, independent once again. The three years since have been simultaneously the most difficult and the most rewarding of Waterfox’s existence.
I’m not going to pretend the economics of running a privacy focused independent browser are great, because they’re really not. When Bing terminated all third party search contracts it hit hard - search partnerships are basically how independent browsers survive, and revenue has been poor since. There have been a few months in the red recently.
Other ways browsers make money just feel icky, and it’s not something that Waterfox stands for either.
But, pain and all, I keep coming back. Every time I think about stepping away, someone sends a kind message through the donation page, or I see a thread somewhere of someone discovering Waterfox for the first time and being pleasantly surprised. There’s a community here that cares, and I care about it.
I want users to know that whatever future steps I’ll take, they’ll always be with Waterfox and its sustainability in mind.
This year will see Waterfox shipping a native content blocker built on Brave’s adblock library - and it’s worth explaining what that means and why.
The blocker runs in the main browser process rather than as a web extension, which means it isn’t subject to the limitations that extension based blockers like uBlock Origin face. It’s faster, more tightly integrated, and doesn’t depend on a separate extension process or require us to constantly pull in upstream updates. Brave’s adblock library is also mature - it has paid engineers working on it, a wide filterset, and crucially it’s licensed under MPL2, the same licence as Waterfox, which makes it a natural fit. uBlock Origin, as good as it is, carries a GPLv3 licence that would’ve created real compatibility headaches.
For how it works in practice: by default, text ads will remain visible on our default search partner’s page - currently Startpage. The idea is that this is what will keep the lights on. This mirrors the approach Brave takes with their search partner.
Info
Update (28 March 2026): Corrected a statement about Brave’s ad blocking behaviour. The original text implied Brave special cases ads on their search partner’s page - they don’t. Brave blocks third party ads on all websites by default, regardless of any partnership, and offers an additional aggressive mode that blocks first party ads as well. Waterfox’s approach of allowing text ads on the default search partner page is our own decision for sustainability, not something inherited from adblock-rs. Thanks to Shivan at Brave for the correction.
Users who want to disable that entirely can do so with a single toggle in settings, and it has nothing to do with any of Brave’s crypto or rewards ecosystem - we’re just using the adblocking library. Everyone else gets a fast, native adblocker out of the box, no extension required.
If you already use an adblocker, don’t worry, you can carry on using it. This will be enabled for new users or users who aren’t already using an adblocker.
In the meanwhile, Waterfox’s membership of the Browser Choice Alliance alongside Google and Opera, is pushing for fair competition and actual user choice in the browser market.
And we still don’t have AI in the browser. That hasn’t changed. The browser’s job is to load web pages, keep your data private, and get out of the way. It seems other browsers have forgotten that.
Oh and one last thing - distribution is important too, so there’s a bigger focus on different packages and architecture support (Linux, you are such a pain to target) - more specifically for ARM64.
I’d like to think so. The browser market is more diverse than it’s ever been in terms of soft forks - everyone and their mum seems to be launching a variation of Firefox. Running an independent browser is getting harder, not easier. But there are more people who care about privacy now than there were when I was compiling a blue Firefox on a tablet PC in my bedroom. More people who want software that respects them.
Waterfox started because a sixteen year old wanted a faster browser. Fifteen years later, it’s still here because enough people want a browser that works for them - not for AI companies, and not for anyone else.
Thanks to everyone who’s been part of this - from the OCN community who gave those early builds a chance, to the people who send donations with messages that make my day, to the contributors who submit patches and file bugs. This project has always been bigger than me, even when I’m the only one working on it.
Here’s to the next 15! 🍻
I also wouldn’t be where I am with the constant moral support of my parents, Angela & Lakis, who since day dot have been proud of everything I’ve done, even if it’s felt like I was failing and flailing. My friends, numerous to count, but especially Lee who I’m surprised hasn’t once told me to shut up about my trials and tribulations. And finally, my wonderful girlfriend and partner Lucy who has been giving helpful design tips because while I have wonderful taste (only half joking) my creative talent is unfortunately lacking.
Read the media coverage Waterfox has received over the last 15 years.
Never mind the technical challenge to allow doing anything with the DOM but disallow reading the forms. Like, prevent the forms leaking its text when you do funny things like testing character width via line breaking or font changes.
...
>Yes, that's correct. Startpage is the default search partner, and their search ads aren't blocked by default.
The framing seems fair to me. Certainly not more unfair than those who criticize Firefox for having a search deal that defaults to Google while allowing the user to change it (which some people do)
https://www.waterfox.com/blog/waterfox-has-joined-system1/
So they’re just shilling their own search product on their own browser. No different from Google and Chrome. Except with some corporate bootlicking from running dog lackeys.
He literally sold it to an online advertising company lol.
EDIT: haha, the best defence of this guy you guys can muster is "If you don't pay me, I'll sell your data to online advertising companies" and that this is some kind of good thing.
The perfect is the enemy of the good.
It has persuaded me that your own inaction was totally unrelated to this outcome.