Leveraging the right tech tools is key to boosting your productivity, especially when you work or study online. And, while there are tons of good productivity apps out there, you should never underestimate the power of the humble web browser. Choosing the right browser can totally revolutionise your online experience and turbo-charge your productivity.
Drawing on our own productivity journey and experience as browser designers, we've curated a definitive list of the best productivity browsers.
What is a productivity browser?
We all know Google Chrome but alternative browsers are steadily growing in popularity, thanks to their unique and clever specialised features. Productivity browsers are specifically designed to help you work efficiently, quickly access relevant information, stay focused and organise your workflow.
With more people switching to tech careers, working from home and travelling as digital nomads, there’s an increasing need for web browsers that are built with productivity in mind. That’s not even mentioning the fact that most day-to-day life admin is now conducted online.
Why is it so important to use a productivity browser?
The internet can be an incredibly distracting place, filled with visual noise, cat videos and online ads 24/7. If you want to be productive and blast through your to-do list, you need a productivity browser that’s designed to minimise online distractions and keep you focused.
As well as increasing focus, productivity browsers also help you save precious time. They’re built to help you quickly access relevant information and your most-visited sites. No more wasted hours sifting through open tabs and cluttered, forgotten bookmarks.
When you accumulate open tabs or hit the back button, you start to increase the frequency of context-switching. Research has shown it takes 9 and a half minutes to regain proper focus after context-switching. If you think how many times you might switch tabs in a day, internet browsers are causing a huge loss of productivity every single day.
Productivity browsers help to tackle this problem and boost your efficiency online.
Best browsers for productivity
So now that you understand the importance of using a productivity browser, let’s discuss the best options available to you. After careful review, here’s our list.
Horse Browser
In our opinion, Horse Browser is the best browser for productivity, due to its unique navigation system and clever productivity features. OK, maybe we’re a bit biased but, listen up here’s why Horse Browser is top of the list.
While other browsers provide Tab organization and grouping features, they fail to address the persistent problem of clutter and forgetfulness caused by Tabs.
So, let’s see what makes Horse Browser so different…
Key productivity features
- Unique Trails Feature: Horse Browser replaces Tabs with a unique navigation system, named Trails. This clever feature is the reason we rate Horse Browser as the best browser for productivity. Clicking a link creates a new page on the Trail, neatly organising nested pages in a vertical layout for easy access and heightened productivity. Trails serve as tabs, bookmarks, and history in one, eliminating the hassle of searching for lost information. With Trail’s intuitive layout, you effortlessly track your online journey, making context switching so much easier. Plus, a convenient Find in Page tool streamlines information retrieval across pages.
- Autosaves Your Pages: Another of our favourite features. Horse Browser autosaves your pages, just like a Notes App. Everything you need is still there, whenever you re-open your browser, even after an update or shut down. You’ll never lose important work or sites again.
- Built-in productivity system: Re-arrange pages by priority, add personal reminders with day labels, or employ custom emojis for a visual coding system. Horse Browser empowers you to design your own efficient productivity system while maintaining simplicity. Focus on task completion, not navigating a complex interface.
- Focus-friendly Design: Horse Browser enhances your focus with a collapsible sidebar feature for distraction-free screen time during deep-focus tasks like reading research papers. Plus, it boasts an effective built-in Ad-Blocker and Dark Reader to eliminate intrusive ads and alleviate eye strain, ensuring uninterrupted concentration.
Pricing: $99 one-off lifetime. Horse Browser may be the only paid-for browser on the list but we think the cost is worth it for lifetime access to its unique Trails feature.
Being a user-supported business, Horse Browser also doesn’t collect or sell users’ telemetry data. We think we need more user-funded models, like this.
Microsoft Edge
Microsoft’s browser, Edge, has some super useful productivity features and we’ve rounded up our choice of its top tools for you here.
KEY PRODUCTIVITY FEATURES
- Collections: Microsoft Edge’s Collections feature allows you to save webpages by dragging and dropping tabs into a Collection. Your tabs appear in a list with thumbnails for quick, easy reference. Collections can be accessed and shared anytime and include a useful notes feature. That said, Collections can quickly fall prey to the very same issue as Bookmarks. They’re easily lost, cluttered up and forgotten. Microsoft Edge also features vertical tabs; but if you’re looking for a vertical list system, in our opinion, the functionality leaves a lot to be desired when compared to Horse Browser’s Trails.
- Immersive Reader: The Immersive Reader feature allows users to view a distraction-free version of online text and has a ‘read aloud’ function, with audio reading of the page.
- Built-in PDF Viewer and Editor: Say goodbye to third-party PDF viewers! Microsoft Edge comes equipped with a built-in PDF viewer and editor, allowing you to view, annotate, and edit PDF documents directly within the browser. Whether you're reviewing documents, filling out forms, or collaborating on projects, the built-in PDF tools in Microsoft Edge streamline your workflow.
Pricing: Free but there’s no such thing as a free lunch. Despite some unique security features, like Password Monitor, Microsoft Edge has received criticism due to data collection, privacy concerns and even for injecting ads into users’ desktop operating systems.
Vivaldi
Known as the most customisable browser out there, Vivaldi can be fine-tuned to suit you. That said, customisation could end up in a distracted user experience and it also takes time… We’re not so fond of time-consuming systems when it comes to productivity!
KEY PRODUCTIVITY FEATURES
- Customisable tab organization: Designed to be one of the most customisable browsers out there, Vivaldi’s tab management tools are aligned with this approach. Tab stacking allows users to create groups of tabs in two-level stacks, while tab tiling gives a splitscreen view. And users can choose between vertical, accordion or compact mode to view their tabs. While Vivaldi’s customisation makes it easy to personalise your organisation, we also see potential for things to get pretty cluttered, pretty quickly!
- In-built notes: Capture snippets of text, URLs, and screenshots directly from webpages, allowing you to create and organize notes, brainstorming, or reference purposes. With Notes in Vivaldi Browser, you can consolidate information and streamline your workflow, by having everything you need at your fingertips.
- Reader View: Like Microsoft Edge, Vivaldi offers a distraction-free Reader, which removes ads and other visual clutter when reading an online article.
Pricing: Free… But, again, there’s a recurring theme here… While Vivaldi doesn’t track its users or sell data to the same extent as some other browsers, it does earn revenue through search engine and bookmark partnerships.
What makes a good productivity browser / what to look for?
When choosing a productivity browser, there are various factors to consider, like cost, privacy, ease of use and your own particular workflow. Maybe you’re keen to look into cutting-edge AI tools. Perhaps there are specific factors in your workflow to consider. Do you spend a lot of time working with PDF documents and want to seamlessly work on these within your browser? Maybe Microsoft Edge is for you.
Personally, we would recommend the value of paying for our premium productivity tool, Horse Browser, because of its unique Trails feature. Trails is a revelatory feature that boosts productivity and improves context-switching. As a bonus, Horse Browser also values your privacy.
In conclusion
Productivity browsers help you limit distractions, save time accessing information, organise your workflow and improve context-switching. Choosing the right productivity browser can make a huge difference to your work life, task management and day-to-day efficiency. In fact, with the right browser, you can reclaim hours of time, every single day!
To explore Horse Browser for yourself, check it out here.
