I replaced Firefox with Zen, and it's what Mozilla should have built years ago

Published Oct 30, 2026, 2:10 PM EDT Mahnoor Faisal is a tech journalist covering AI and productivity tools with bylines at XDA, SlashGear, MakeUseOf, Laptop Mag, and Android Police. She's been writing professionally since she was sixteen, and has since penned hundreds of articles. This includes in-depth coverage of AI tools like NotebookLM to breaking news across the AI space. Her passion for technology started when she received her first iPod Touch (4th generation) on her 8th birthday, and she's been deep in the tech world ever since. Currently pursuing a degree in computer science, Mahnoor brings both a journalist's eye and a technical foundation to her coverage of how AI is reshaping the way we work and learn. The way we use the internet has changed drastically over the last few years. Watching hour-long YouTube videos has slowly given way to scrolling through TikTok and Instagram Reels. Googling every little question is no longer second nature when you can just ask ChatGPT. Building an app, something that once required weeks of learning to code, can now take a fraction of that time with AI. Yet, despite how much our internet habits have changed (for better or for worse), one thing has remained surprisingly constant: the browser. Sure, we've seen plenty of AI-powered browsers pop up recently, but at their core, they're still browsers. That's why I think choosing the right browser is almost as important as picking the right shoes for a trip where you know you'll be walking 20,000 steps a day. I've experimented with my fair share of browsers over the years, and Firefox was my go-to for a good chunk of that time. That was until I discovered Zen, a browser that made me wonder why Mozilla hadn't built something like it years ago. Browsers have forgotten how to just be browsers Every feature wants a piece of your screen Now, I've tried practically every AI browser out there. While I do think they're more than a gimmick and have some truly useful features up their sleeve, I also think we've reached the point where we're going a tad bit overboard. I'm beginning to get somewhat annoyed by every app I use having AI scattered throughout it, especially in places it has no business being. My email client, the software I write my articles on, the tool I use to edit the images I take for my articles — practically everything I use has some sort of AI feature baked into it. While I'm all for AI making my life easier, I don't need every tool I use to forcibly become an AI assistant. A browser is a prime example of that. If it has AI features, I'd rather they be tucked away so I can enable them when I actually need them, instead of having them shoved in my face every time I open a new tab. Firefox, for example, has introduced its fair share of AI features, including an AI chatbot sidebar, AI-powered link previews, and smart tab grouping. To Mozilla's credit, it does let users disable these features entirely, which is something I wish more companies would do. But beyond AI, I think modern browsers have become unnecessarily cluttered. Between toolbars, sidebars, and buttons for features I barely use, it sometimes feels like the actual webpage is fighting for space. Zen goes against everything modern browsers are becoming It refuses to follow the modern browser playback That's exactly what I've come to appreciate about Zen. Rather than trying to reinvent the browser by turning it into yet another AI assistant, it focuses on making the browsing experience itself better. Beyond not shipping with a native AI assistant or advertising any sort of agentic browsing features, Zen is built around minimalism. Its developers describe it as a calmer way to browse the internet, and that's exactly what it feels like. Instead of overwhelming you with buttons, toolbars, and features competing for your attention, Zen keeps its interface clean and puts the actual webpage front and center. The browser also manages to make browsing feel a lot calmer through its design. You can customise it with subtle gradients and muted colors, and there's even a collection of community-made Zen Mods that let you tweak its appearance further. The browser's interface is designed to be bare-bones and offer the absolute minimum by default. You can strip away traditional browser elements like the toolbar and sidebar to leave you with nothing but the webpage itself using a feature called Compact Mode. For someone like me who gets distracted just by seeing another tab I opened a few minutes ago, this is a godsend. It removes the temptation to constantly switch between tabs, check what else I have open, or go down an entirely different rabbit hole when I'm supposed to be getting work done. Whenever I do need to access my tabs or the toolbar, I can simply hover over the edges of the screen to bring them back. Zen is more than just a pretty face You know when something you use has features you immediately miss the day you need to forcibly use another tool for even a few minutes? I remember having to use another browser at college for an exam, and that's when I realized just how much I'd gotten used to Zen's little conveniences. Features I barely gave a second thought to while using Zen suddenly felt like necessities the moment I didn't have access to them. That brings me to a couple of extra features Zen has that make it somewhat difficult to adjust to other browsers. First up is a feature called Glance. As a journalist who needs to spend a significant amount of time browsing the web before even getting to the stage where I can begin using my keyboard, my browser is always a mess by the time I'm done. I typically have dozens of tabs open, most of which I've only opened to quickly check a piece of information, verify a claim, or see whether a source is even worth reading. That's where Glance comes in. Instead of opening every link in a new tab, Zen lets you preview webpages in a floating window without leaving the page you're currently on. If the page has what I'm looking for, I can quickly go through it and close the preview when I'm done. If it's something I need to spend more time on, I can expand it into a full tab. While we're talking about features I find helpful in a journalist capacity, Zen also lets you directly copy URLs as Markdown links. Since I write most of my articles in Markdown, this is an absolute lifesaver. Instead of copying a webpage's title, copying its URL separately, and then manually formatting the two into a hyperlink, I can get a properly formatted Markdown link in one go. Spaces and Essentials are two other features I've come to appreciate. Spaces basically let you create separate workspaces for different activities, each with its own set of tabs. For instance, I can have one Space dedicated to researching articles, another for university work, and a third for personal browsing. Instead of having everything crammed into a single window, I can switch between these Spaces whenever I need to without losing track of what I was doing. Essentials, on the other hand, are tabs that stay accessible across all your Spaces. Think of websites you use constantly, regardless of what you're working on. For me, that's usually Gmail, Google Calendar, and Google Tasks. Rather than having to open them separately in every Space, I can add them to Essentials and access them no matter which workspace I'm in. Zen takes privacy seriously, too You also get some solid privacy benefits with Zen. Since it's built on Firefox, it uses Mozilla's Gecko engine rather than Chromium, which powers the vast majority of popular browsers. It's also completely open-source, meaning anyone can inspect its code, and it strips out Firefox's built-in telemetry. Zen's developers say they try to disable all telemetry collection, though they acknowledge they may have missed some. It's refreshing to see a browser take privacy seriously without making you jump through hoops to achieve it. So, all in all, Zen is definitely a browser that's on top of my recommendations list. I couldn't recommend it enough!