Browser Setup Guide

Browser setup: block adverts & cookie popups, save bookmarks, use a password manager

Fed up with ads everywhere and cookie popups on every website? This video shows you four quick browser tweaks that'll make your time online a bit less annoying. I'll walk you through installing uBlock Origin to block ads (makes sites load way faster, especially on older computers), and "I Still Don't Care About Cookies" to automatically dismiss those annoying GDPR banners.

Also covers smart bookmarking tricks like bookmarking the login page itself, and why you should use a password manager like Bitwarden (free and open source). It takes about 10 minutes to set all this up, and I can't promise it'll save you hours, but it takes little bits of friction out of your whole day - cookie banners clicked away for you, adverts never downloaded, passwords never typed. It works best with Firefox, which isn't constantly trying to make your life worse like Chrome does.

The ad blocker demo

A few specifics from the video. I do the walkthrough on a freshly installed Firefox, because Firefox keeps making changes that benefit users while Chrome, it seems to me, keeps degrading the experience. With the ad blocker, you want uBlock Origin - not the one just called uBlock, it's got to have Origin. The demo is dailymail.co.uk, a terrible example of a website for many reasons, not least the adverts: a sofa banner at the top, autoplaying video adverts, casino adverts, adverts for HR software, and a page that crawls. Turn uBlock Origin back on and reload, and it's clean and loads fast - the extension had blocked 192 different scripts on that one page, which is 192 chunks of work your computer didn't have to do. The cookie banner extension gets demoed on CNN and the Independent: the GDPR banner pops up and is clicked away automatically before you notice it, every time.

Bookmarks and passwords

It might sound obvious to bookmark the pages you visit, but it took me a while to get into the habit, honestly. Bookmark the login page itself rather than the homepage - I bookmark the login page at my domain registrar, which saves me two clicks every single time - and if the bookmark toolbar only shows on new tabs (Firefox's default), right click it and set it to always show. On passwords: browsers will offer to save them for you, and Firefox Sync (through a Mozilla account) syncs your passwords, tabs, and bookmarks across your computers and acts as a backup if one dies, but I prefer Bitwarden - free and open source, with all the core functions in the free plan - which keeps everything behind one master password, so every other password can be totally random gobbledegook you never type. The migration isn't all-or-nothing: you move logins over gradually as you use them. Getting into the ins and outs of Bitwarden is a bit much for this video, but it won't take you long to pick up.

Mentioned links

Get uBlock Origin for blocking ads, "I Still Don't Care About Cookies" for dismissing cookie popups, Bitwarden for password management, and Firefox for a better browsing experience.

For the record, this is my actual workflow: I spend my working day in a browser, building and looking after the sites in my examples, and every tool above is free and open source. Client reviews are here if you'd rather hand the whole lot over.

If you'd like a hand setting up the tools around your business's website, fill in the form below and I'll reply within 48 hours.