Chrome comes preinstalled on almost all Android phones. It’s tied to your Google account and works seamlessly with other Google apps and services.
That’s why it is hard to leave. You either have to rebuild your setup around a new browser or accept losing features you use every day.
But people have done it successfully.
My colleagues, Anu and Stephen, are examples. Anu ditched Chrome for Vivaldi, while Stephen has used Samsung Browser for years.
I tried to do the same, but it was a tall order. I quickly realized I couldn’t do without several Chrome features. Let me explain.
Every alternative does something better
But fails on many others
Several browsers make a good case against Chrome.
Firefox supports add-ons, including ad blockers, something Chrome on Android has been missing for years. Brave blocks ads and trackers out of the box, with aggressive cookie blocking that Chrome can’t match.
Microsoft Edge has its own extensions and a Read Aloud feature.
Then there’s Samsung Browser, if you use a Samsung Galaxy phone. It is preinstalled, and you can’t remove it — I hid it from my app list as soon as I got my phone.
Still, it does a lot of things well.
It has Galaxy AI, which lets you summarize, translate, and ask questions about web pages.
It also has a secret mode that locks private tabs behind your fingerprint, and smart anti-tracking that blocks third-party trackers.
These are all good browsers if you’re starting over. But most of us aren’t. Replicating Chrome’s core features in any of them will be a hassle.
Google Password Manager works seamlessly
Every other browser wants its own vault
If you’ve used Chrome for a while, you’ve probably saved passwords and passkeys to the Google Password Manager. They work together so well that you don’t even notice.
Every major alternative pushes its password manager. Firefox saves logins to your Mozilla account, Edge to your Microsoft account, Samsung Browser to Samsung Pass, and Brave to its sync.
Because you can set Google Password Manager as Android’s autofill service, you can switch to most of these browsers and maintain access to your passwords.
However, only Chrome autofills from Google Password Manager on a PC. In other browsers, you’d have to look up your passwords at passwords.google.com. Another option is to move your passwords to the new password manager.
Even that isn’t straightforward. For example, Samsung Pass exports passwords in a format only it can read, so ditching it later won’t be easy.
Chrome syncs across several devices
Other browsers are somewhat limited
Say you visit a web page on your phone. You can continue reading on your laptop, whether that’s a Windows PC, a Mac, or a Chromebook, from Chrome’s recent tabs.
Chrome also syncs your bookmarks, passwords, web history, tabs, and tab groups across all your devices.
Firefox, Edge, and Brave sync too, but you have to switch browsers on your laptop.
Samsung Browser is even more limited. It syncs bookmarks, history, and Samsung Pass logins with your Windows laptop. But you can’t carry over a page you were reading from your phone, since that feature is reserved for Galaxy Books.
And there’s no Mac version. Plus, if you switch to a non-Samsung phone later, you’d lose all the Galaxy AI features in the Samsung Browser.
Chrome reads full articles aloud
Others fall short
This is the one I didn’t realize I’d miss. Tap the three-dot menu in Chrome and choose Listen to this page, and it’ll read the whole article aloud.
You can change the speed, skip around, or keep it playing with your screen off if you want to continue listening while handling chores or commuting. My favorite is the AI button, which turns the text into an interactive, podcast-like session with two voices.
Edge and Samsung Browser offer similar read-aloud tools, but without Chrome’s AI playback. Firefox has no built-in option, so you’d need an add-on.
Gemini in Chrome is taking things to another level
At least for US users at the moment
Google started rolling out Gemini in Chrome to US Android users in August.
It can summarize pages, add events to Google Calendar, save notes to Keep, and pull information from Gmail. If you have a Google AI Pro subscription, you get auto browse for multistep tasks.
It hasn’t rolled out globally yet, but it’ll likely expand to more countries with time. And you’d expect Google to keep adding new features.
Other browsers have their AI tools: Edge has Copilot, Brave has Leo, and Samsung Browser has Galaxy AI’s Browsing assist. But none of them plugs into Google’s apps like Gemini.
Chrome wins if you already use Google’s apps and services
Firefox, Edge, Brave, and Samsung Browser are good browsers. Some are better than Chrome for certain use cases.
Any of them is worth a try if you’re starting fresh or don’t rely much on Google’s services.
But for most Android users, your passwords, laptop browsing, and several apps run through a Google account, and Chrome is the only browser that works seamlessly with them.
So I’m putting Samsung Browser back in my hidden apps. But if you’d rather keep looking, some browsers combine the best of Chrome, Firefox, and Safari.
