Floorp Browser 12.16.4

Firefox is a fine engine wrapped in an interface that has barely moved in years.

Floorp is what happens when someone rebuilds the interface and leaves the engine alone.

It is an open-source browser from the Floorp Projects team in Japan, built on the same Gecko engine as Firefox, with the tab and window features Mozilla has never shipped bolted on top.

Everything Firefox does - extensions, containers, tracking protection, sync - still works. What changes is how you organise the tabs on screen.

Workspaces, Containers and Web Panels

Workspaces are the headline feature. Each one holds its own set of tabs, so work, personal browsing and a research project can live in the same window without ever seeing each other.

They plug into Firefox's container system, which keeps cookies and logins separated per container. In practice that means two accounts on the same site, signed in at once, in different workspaces, with neither logging the other out.

Web panels put a narrow slice of a site down one side of the window. Chat, a music player, a to-do list or a reference page stays visible while you work in the main area, without giving up a whole tab to it.

Both survive the boring parts too: workspaces restore properly on startup, and container tabs keep their identity when you type a new address into the bar.

Split View, Zen Mode and the Command Palette

Split view puts two pages side by side in one tab, with several layouts and drag-and-drop to rearrange them. It is the feature most people install Floorp for and never turn off.

Zen Mode strips the interface back to the page itself for distraction-free reading, and a keyboard shortcut brings everything back.

The command palette on Ctrl+Shift+P is the quiet one worth learning. Type what you want - a setting, a tab, a bookmark, an action - instead of hunting through menus.

There is more underneath: mouse gestures including rocker gestures, multi-row tabs, a keyboard shortcut editor, a built-in notes tool that syncs, and optimisation for the Tree Style Tab extension if you prefer that route.

Installing Sites as Apps

Floorp can install a website as its own desktop app, with its own window and taskbar entry, which Firefox itself still does not offer.

Those app windows follow the site's own styling instructions rather than looking like a stripped browser, and they can be tied to a Firefox container, so a work web app runs signed into the work account and nothing else.

What It Plays

Because the engine is Gecko, playback behaves exactly like Firefox. AV1 decodes through dav1d, H.264 and VP9 are covered, and streaming services work through the same Widevine module Firefox uses - which is what keeps Netflix and the rest playing.

HEVC is the usual sore point in any Firefox-based browser, since it leans on what the operating system and your GPU provide rather than shipping its own decoder.

If a video stalls or drops frames, playing AV1 video on Windows 11 covers the hardware decoding side, and YouTube's AV1 playback explains why the same clip can be smooth in one browser and not another.

If you are weighing the formats themselves, AV1 against H.265 covers where each one wins.

For a quick check that a file plays at all, the web player runs in any browser tab, and the codec finder identifies what a file actually contains.

For saving rather than streaming, the stream extractor pulls the direct URL out of a page, and yt-dlp handles the download itself.

Builds, Including Portable

There are installers for Windows, macOS as a universal build covering Intel and Apple Silicon, and Linux as .deb, tarball and ARM64 packages.

A portable Windows build is also available on the download page, added after a reader asked for one. It runs from a USB stick and keeps its profile alongside it.

The installer is around 91 MB, which is normal for a full browser engine and nothing to do with Floorp's own additions.

Floorp Against the Other Firefox Forks

Zen Browser is the closest rival and chases the same idea, with vertical tabs, workspaces and split view. Zen leans harder into a minimal, redesigned look; Floorp keeps a more conventional Firefox layout and gives you more switches to flip.

LibreWolf and Mullvad Browser solve a different problem. They strip telemetry and harden privacy defaults rather than adding interface features, so pick those if privacy is the point rather than tab management.

Against Firefox itself, the trade is features for release lag. Floorp tracks Firefox rather than shipping alongside it, so security updates land a little later, which is the honest cost of running any fork.

On the Chromium side, Brave (weighed up here), Edge, Opera and Chrome all offer versions of these features, but they share Google's engine. Floorp is one of the few ways to get this kind of interface on a non-Chromium browser. The rest are in Web Browsers.

Changes in Floorp Browser 12.16.4

• Fixed web panels and extension panels failing to load in the sidebar on the Gecko 153 engine.
• Fixed address bar navigation losing the container in workspace container tabs.
• Release updates are now bound to verified build provenance.

A maintenance release. The larger recent additions were the command palette, Zen Mode, the expanded split view layouts, container support for installed web apps, and syncing for the built-in notes.

Floorp is licensed under the Mozilla Public License 2.0, so the source is public and the browser is free in both senses.