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I’ve been Chrome-free for eight months now—and Zen Browser is the reason.

For a long time, I thought browsers were basically a solved problem. Then I tried Zen, and it felt like a breath of fresh air after Chrome.

Almost every common action has a thoughtful shortcut. I can open links through the command bar, search quickly, create tabs without breaking focus, and split two tabs side by side in seconds. Muting a noisy tab takes one click. Picture-in-Picture behaves like a proper OS-level window. Small things, perhaps—but together they remove a surprising amount of friction.

The bigger difference is how Zen organizes browsing. Essentials keep the tabs I always need close at hand. Spaces, folders, and subfolders let me organize active work where it actually happens—in the browser—not in a forgotten bookmarks archive. It feels less like managing a pile of tabs and more like moving through deliberate contexts.

And Zen keeps improving. Space Routing can now send particular links to the right Space automatically. A YouTube/reddit link opened while I am working can go straight to my personal Space instead of quietly becoming another distraction in the work one. That is the kind of workflow-aware feature I did not know I wanted until I had it.

It is not perfect. Extensions cannot be configured per Space, and some of the extensions i have in Chrome(JAM extension for example) not available for Firefox

Zen made the browser feel exciting again—not because of one revolutionary feature, but because dozens of thoughtful details make it feel fast, calm, and designed for how I actually work.

After Chrome, it is simply a joy to use.

Read the current version at https://dufran.org/posts/zen-made-the-browser-feel-exciting-again/