Horse Browser Is a Strange Sidekick Browser Alternative

You are looking for a Sidekick Browser alternative. Most lists will hand you Chrome with three extensions, Brave, or Zen. Horse Browser is on this list for one specific reason, and most of you should not pick it.

Sidekick is no longer being actively developed. Most former Sidekick users will be perfectly happy back in Chrome with an ad blocker, a pomodoro extension, and a tab manager. Sidekick's whole pitch was a bundle of features that Chrome already supports if you install them. You can have that bundle again, for free, today.

Horse Browser is for the small subset of you who picked Sidekick because someone called it "for ADHD," used it for a couple of months, and quietly noticed it didn't actually help. This is for you.

Sidekick was Chromium with a productivity bundle baked in. The features were:

That's a real bundle. For a knowledge worker who wants more discipline at the desk, it's a sensible feature set, and a lot of people got real work out of it. If that's the bundle you wanted, Horse Browser is not the answer. Chrome with a Pomodoro extension, Cold Turkey for the blocker, and Notion in a pinned tab will give you most of it back, free. That stack is mature and well-supported. Go.

Sidekick was, at a certain point, marketed as a browser for ADHD. Each feature in the bundle is genuinely useful for someone. The question is just whether that someone has ADHD.

Distraction blockers are great. Cold Turkey, Freedom, LeechBlock — all good apps, and people who lose hours to Twitter use them and get those hours back. The reason a built-in blocker doesn't tend to land for ADHD brains is that the tabs an ADHD adult has open are usually not distractions. They're thoughts. Sometimes the sixth tab in is the load-bearing one — the page you opened from a thing you opened from a thing, and that's where the actual idea was. Blocking it would be the wrong move.

Focus modes are great when single-tasking is the thing you actually want to do. Writers love them. Code editors have had them for years. The reason they don't tend to land for ADHD adults is that "just focus on one thing at a time" is the advice we've been getting our whole lives, and a black border around the active tab is that same advice in software form. Not Sidekick's fault, but not the fix either.

Pomodoro is a great technique. Be Focused, Forest, the kitchen timer on your phone — all good apps, and lots of people get real work out of 25-minute sprints. The reason it tends not to land for ADHD brains specifically is that the issue isn't time discipline; it's dopamine regulation, which a beep can't reach. Horse doesn't run a timer. Different scope.

App-launcher sidebars are a lovely productivity pattern. If your daily problem is "where is Slack," pinning Slack to a sidebar genuinely helps. The ADHD adult's daily problem is rarely "where is Slack." It's "where did the page I had three clicks ago go." A sidebar of app icons doesn't reach that question. Different feature for a different person.

Tab sessions are excellent for project-based work — Workona built a whole successful product around the idea, and a lot of researchers and writers swear by them. They're flat by design: a group of tabs, saved together, reopened together. The moment you click a link inside that session, the new tab joins the group with no relationship to the page you came from. For most workflows that's fine. For the ADHD workflow it's the same problem in a tidier container.

So the Sidekick bundle is a real productivity browser for users who want productivity scaffolding. The audience that didn't quite click was the one being told the bundle was specifically for ADHD. The actual ADHD experience is closer to "I have forty-seven thoughts in flight and I would like the browser to hold their structure so I can come back to them," which is a different feature set entirely.

Horse Browser does not have a distraction blocker, a focus mode, or a pomodoro timer, and it never will. Those are the wrong features for the audience Horse is built for.

Instead:

What's missing matters as much as what's there. There's no full-screen distraction-eraser. No timer. No "block yourself from Twitter between 9 and 11." Horse does not believe the tabs are the disease.

Horse Browser is for people whose brain genuinely does not work with tabs. Not "tabs are mildly annoying." Genuinely does not work. Adults with ADHD or autism who have spent twenty years being told to focus harder, install yet another tab manager, take a productivity course, and possibly meditate.

That's Carol. That's me. That's the audience.

The honest part: a portion of Sidekick's users tried it because they wanted to be more disciplined. They didn't have ADHD. They wanted the discipline. If that's you, Horse won't help either. We don't sell discipline. We sell relief from a thing that may or may not be hurting you.

If Horse isn't right for you, and statistically it isn't, here's the honest field, written by someone who has tried all of them:

If your Sidekick-shaped hole was about discipline scaffolding, Chrome plus extensions is your answer. If it was about the sidebar aesthetic, Zen. If it was about tabs hurting you in a way no extension reached, then we should talk.

The "Why it existed" row is the one that matters. If your problem was discipline, Sidekick was a real tool. If your problem was that tabs themselves were making your work harder, that's a different problem and Horse is built for it.

Horse Browser doesn't punish you for having too many tabs. It doesn't block sites. It doesn't time your work. It assumes your brain works the way it works and tries to follow along.

If you used Sidekick because you wanted productivity scaffolding, Horse Browser is not the answer. Chrome with extensions is. We mean that.

If you used Sidekick because someone called it "for ADHD" and you have ADHD and it didn't actually help, that's the conversation we want to have. Try it free for two weeks. Card upfront, cancel any time before it bills, pay nothing if it isn't for you.

For most former Sidekick users, Chrome with the right extensions is functionally identical and free. Brave if you want the ad blocker built in. Zen Browser if the sidebar aesthetic is what you'll miss. Horse Browser is the right answer if and only if you tried Sidekick "for ADHD" and noticed it never actually fixed the thing.

No. Sidekick was scaffolding for users who wanted to be more disciplined while they worked. Horse replaces tabs entirely with Trails for users whose brains don't work with tabs in the first place. Different tool, different audience.

No, by design. Focus modes are great when single-tasking is the thing you want to do. The audience Horse is built for has been told to "just focus on one thing at a time" all their lives, and a black border around the active tab doesn't change that. Different scope.

No. Pomodoro is a great technique and there are good apps for it (Be Focused, Forest, your phone's kitchen timer). Horse holds the structure of your thinking. It does not run your clock.

No. Cold Turkey and Freedom are great for users whose problem is willpower. The audience Horse is built for usually has open tabs that are thoughts, not distractions. Blocking them would be solving a different problem.

There is a two-week free trial. Credit card upfront, cancel any time before it bills, pay nothing if it isn't for you. After that, $70/year. We charge because we plan to still be here next year.