Vanadium Browser - I'm done!

mdcyntst

I'm done with the browser. maybe it was a good idea at one point, but it seems featureless. Can't even create/manage bookmarks. What browser doesn't support bookmarks? The pull down refresh gesture is the most effing annoying feature and it can't be disabled. I dislike all gestures. Usually you can disable gestures, but not here. I'll move on and let it die.

Lilac6044

mdcyntst Hi, this may be my ignorance. Can you not click the three dots and click the star button at the top to save the bookmark? Then from the three dot menu just click bookmarks to look at saved bookmarks.

Murcielago

mdcyntst

I'm done with the browser. maybe it was a good idea at one point, but it seems featureless. Can't even create/manage bookmarks. What browser doesn't support bookmarks?

Unfortunately, bookmarks cannot currently be managed. This is a much-requested feature, and GrapheneOS seems to be aware of this.

However, that doesn't mean the browser is "featureless" - quite the contrary:

https://grapheneos.org/features#vanadium
https://grapheneos.org/usage#web-browsing

Despite some room for improvement, I enjoy using Vanadium as my default browser because of its features and I don't seem to be the only one:

https://discuss.grapheneos.org/d/10370-does-anyone-actually-use-vanadium
https://discuss.grapheneos.org/d/24735-brave-vs-vanadium

A small development team cannot solve everything simultaneously- unfortunately. And at present, in particular, there appear to be other more important areas that require considerable effort, such as:

https://discuss.grapheneos.org/d/27068-grapheneos-security-preview-releases
https://discuss.grapheneos.org/d/25099-pixel-10-still-too-early-to-ask-us-when-it-will-be-supported

A few (random) ideas on how you could deal with the situation:

Contribute code and help developing this requested feature
Give the corresponding feature request a thumbs up—this will show the GrapheneOS developers that this feature is important to you
donating (you can't “buy” a feature, but money helps supporting the project)
use a workaround until the feature is implemented:
For example, I save links as bookmarks in a note-taking app as long as Vanadium does not support bookmark import/export. Or you could use a bookmark manager such as floccus (note: I have not tested it myself, but have seen it mentioned here and in other forums).
Or just use a different browser that you like better. You may find this comparison helpful.

The pull down refresh gesture is the most effing annoying feature and it can't be disabled. I dislike all gestures. Usually you can disable gestures, but not here.

Sorry, I didn't quite understand that part. Perhaps you could explain it in more detail, then someone here might be able to help you.

GrapheneOS

mdcyntst

Can't even create/manage bookmarks. What browser doesn't support bookmarks?

Vanadium has the standard Chromium bookmarks support. You create a bookmark with the star button and there's a menu for using and organizing bookmarks.

The pull down refresh gesture is the most effing annoying feature and it can't be disabled.

It's the standard Chromium refresh gesture, not specific to Vanadium at all.

gvprtskvni

mdcyntst Vanadium has bookmarks. What are you talking about?

Or do you mean importing/exporting bookmarks? I don't think it supports that yet.

Novalissoide

This was my first impression as well. I then did the simplest workaround for bookmarks which turned out to be rather robust;
Install allmost any basic notes-app. Let it create a note. Open a webpage in Vanadium, in the menu, click 'Share...', then select the basic notes app and its note. The webpage address now gets written on the note, and the next time you select 'share' from within Vanadium, the notes app will be pre-selected. After a while, this will feel increasingly like adding new bookmarks, and you can share to this note from any browser, making a unified backup of your links. Several notes apps also can be set to make these links clickable.

Novalissoide

Lilac6044
Of course, Vanadium has good bookmarks but not easily exportable.

Novalissoide

The forced pull-to-refresh has no solution other than learning to live with it over time, none of the serious alternative browsers has this toggle, none that I'm aware of.

Lilac6044

Novalissoide ah, I see what you are saying. Yeah, I can see how the lack of import functionality can be bothersome if you have loads of bookmarks elsewhere.

GrapheneOS

Murcielago Importing and exporting bookmarks is a much different thing from managing bookmarks. It does have full support for creating, using and managing bookmarks internally. It doesn't have a way to export or import since Chromium doesn't have that on mobile but rather relies on sync in Chrome. We do plan to add support for exporting and importing bookmarks but it hasn't been implemented yet.

Novalissoide

The only browsers with good, practical and offline import+export solutions are also way more relaxed security-wise than Vanadium, so, tinkering with workarounds for manual backup is really worth the effort.

Murcielago

GrapheneOS

I equated import and export with “managing.” You’re right, that’s not the same thing—thanks for the clarification.

Anon6095

mdcyntst Can't even create/manage bookmarks.

Whats with the star buton?

neotux

mdcyntst

mdcyntst Can't even create/manage bookmarks. What browser doesn't support bookmarks?

It does support bookmarks. You can create bookmarks, edit them and create folders to structure your bookmarks.

So not sure what you mean by posting this.

hicks

It is interesting how ppl want to have privacy, yet doesn't want to compromise anything for it.
Privacy often in the net is achieved by making your self look like thousands of other users. It mean any changes, custom settings and etc to your browser makes you look different and easily identifiable.
Great example was or maybe still is Tor, where idea was to not add anything to it in order to make it look same like others for sites you where visiting using it.