Is arkenfox user.js safe
Short answer is yes its safe
Arkenfox has been known about and recommended in the privacy community, for quite a few years now. It is Firefox at it’s best (for privacy/security), but you can run into problems when Mozilla changes various about:config settings, in Firefox. This is why I often suggest people use Librewolf, instead. It’s not as good, and is a Firefox fork, but you don’t really need to worry about stuff breaking. Everything is already fixed, and pre-configured by the Librewolf devs.
Short answer: yes! It’s up there with uBlock Origin in terms of being a common recommendation for hardening Firefox.
I use Arkenfox and love it. It does occasionally break things, but the documentation does an excellent job of outlining how to fix those edge cases and even provides recommended toggles if you’re concerned about compatibility.
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Shameless plug, but our FF hardening guide dives into arkenfox a great deal: The Ultimate Guide to Firefox Hardening in 2022 - YouTube
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Arkenfox can break things accessibility related, so I wouldn’t recommend installing it if you are disabled.
the arkenfox crew is a very knowledgeable bunch and they always keep up with the latest version of FF - they start preparing for the next release of their user.js before the corresponding version of FF is released - that said, the newest user.js version can still lag behind the corresponding FF release, but usually only by a few days and i’ve never found that to break anything
one of the things to keep in mind, as the arkenfox crew states, is to always use their current development version, not the release version
Librewolf isn’t a bad idea, especially for those that don’t want, or don’t know how, to unbreak websites that the arkenfox user.js breaks - the Librewolf crew has a relationship with arkenfox and their user.js reflects that
on a technical note, Librewolf is not a fork of FF - they just write some scripts that they run on FF
if anyone is interested, i maintain 2 Firefox privacy/hardening guides…
The Firefox Privacy Guide for Dummies! – 12Bytes.org
Firefox Configuration Guide for Privacy Freaks and Performance Buffs
i also have a lot of related stuff for the privacy conscious
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