is helium the best minimalist browser for mac?

based on this post, i noticed a lot of people aren't familiar with the most hyped browser in the tech community right now: helium browser. i decided to put together a quick summary of the pros and cons for anyone thinking about making the switch. for context, i'm a bit of a browser enthusiast. i've tested all the common ones across mac and windows—chromium and firefox variants, safari, orion, and the various privacy-focused options. if you're curious about taking a look at helium, here is my take on it. helium is a fork of ungoogled chromium. this means it strips out google's trackers and telemetry, making it highly secure and—something not talked about enough—extremely lightweight. pros: it's simple. it is just a browser. there is no ai crammed into every corner, no endless useless features, and it doesn't try to take over your system. it's lightweight. removing the bloat and background data requests makes it much more efficient with system resources and battery life. it's open source. you can verify the code yourself on their github repository. it's safe. it comes with the full version of ublock origin preinstalled, along with other built-in privacy and security tweaks. it's chromium-based. since it follows the web standard, rendering is fast and compatibility is essentially flawless. cons: no native sync. there is no helium account to share bookmarks, tabs, or reading lists across your devices. limited customization. it is fairly rigid in how it looks and operates compared to others. no ai integration. if your workflow relies on built-in ai tools (like brave's leo, edge's copilot, chrome's gemini, or firefox's sidebar), this isn't the browser for you. to sum up, it's just a browser. you open it, and you browse. i actually think it could take safari's spot on mac, as people use safari for the exact same reasons: it's minimalist, fast, and light on system resources. right now, it's the most efficient and streamlined option for the general public within the chromium ecosystem (since ungoogled chromium isn't really for the average user). that being said, i don't think it's built for browser power users. some people might find helium a bit boring if they need deep customization for tabs, themes, search engines, and endless tweaking. additionally, the lack of sync is a dealbreaker for people who work across multiple devices. the developers have explicitly stated they won't add native sync to maintain their strict privacy and security-first policy, so if you rely on that, you might want to look elsewhere. so why is everyone talking about helium? from my perspective, the team behind it just understood what the community actually needs right now: a simple, secure, and lightweight browser. it's transparent and it simply works well. i genuinely believe it's the right browser for the majority of people. you get the standard chromium features (tab groups, vertical tabs, massive extension store), but without the unnecessary bloat that ruins the experience (like brave).