Digital Minimalist: From Chrome to Safari
A full circle dip of my toes into digital minimalism.
If you’re anything like me, the first thing you did when you got a MacBook was download Chrome and set it as your default browser. Even as an all Apple integrated user (via. MacBook, iPhone, Apple Watch, Apple TV & even an iPad at some point), the first thing I did was open up Safari to download Chrome.
One day, amid the ample amount of free time the year 2020 gave us, I looked at my phone and thought:
“…hey, you have a bunch of apps on your phone. Some of these have duplicate functionality of other apps. You should delete them if you don’t use them.”
I instantly started deleting all of the apps I haven’t used and don’t plan on using within the next three months. (Please note, how I decided what apps I wasn’t going to use for the next three months was purely speculation, and I’ll revisit this soon.)
As I was deleting…boom, there it was, the Safari app.
Instead of instantly removing it, especially now that you can set a default browser on your iPhone, I tried to think HARD of all of the features and functionalities that make me NEED Chrome. And when I speak of NEED, this would only apply to the desktop variant of the browser since Chrome’s huge selling point, at least for me, are extensions.
As far as NEED is concerned, I couldn’t think of any reason to keep using Chrome. Sure, there are a few Chrome extensions I’d want to use, but those would be occasional uses at best.
All I needed were my three most used extensions: 1Password, Grammarly, and an Ad Blocker.
Luckily, through its limited extension pool, those three extensions happen to exist on Safari. I will also get the added benefit of better overall integration, battery life by not being a memory hog, security, and performance in most cases by switching to Safari.
I will probably still have to use Chrome on a desktop for Front End Development purposes, but I’ll see how that pans out when the time arises.
Just changing your browser is hardly digital minimalism.
Ok, so I’m not making a massive change here, but just a baby step into reducing the number of apps I’m using. It might not seem like a big deal, especially if you read any “minimalist” type articles.
I would call this a move towards the use of fewer apps.
I’m sure people could name a million reasons to advocate for their favorite browsers like Firefox, Chrome, Brave, Opera, or even Edge…but for the sake of simplicity, defaulting Safari is more than enough.
Less is more.
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