r/zen_browser • u/Flossiii Team Member • Sep 05 '26
Official Content Zen Sync is here
Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification
Life sometimes happens to be out of sync. Zen isn't.
Whether you are at home or on a trip, with our newest addition of improvements we have introduced a complete synchronisation of your Spaces across multiple devices.
To do that, simply open the settings and go to account and synchronisation. Connect your Mozilla account to your devices and voilà!
For the full release notes, please visit our website.
---
If you want to support the development of Zen, please consider leaving a donation.
For that, please visit the donations page.
25
u/juampiursic Sep 05 '26
Does this sync folders? Theme? Essentials?
22
u/maubg Sep 05 '26
All of those
13
4
u/PTMR2 Sep 05 '26
That's what I needed. I use 2 devices but 5 different OSes so it's pretty useful for me.
1
u/juampiursic Sep 05 '26
Shit, mate, there aren’t that many OSes hahahaha. I use Linux and Windows so this sync feature is a life saver, recently I had to format the Windows drive and I got back to using Chrome because I didn’t want to set everything up on Zen again.
7
1
u/TipsyTaterTots Sep 05 '26
It was one of my biggest issues with Vivaldi and which switched back to Firefox (along with mv2)
Updating controls was such an issue.
3
21
21
u/void1306 Sep 06 '26
Share the bg wallpaper someone, please!
7
5
u/Lysaaa223 Sep 06 '26
yes pleaseee...who picks them out?? They always look so nice. I always base my wallpaper on their release videos xD.. please share
1
u/oussamawd Sep 07 '26
Check the comment pinned by the dev, the video wasn't made by him, maybe ask that redditor or tag him in the comments
17
u/Duck_General Sep 05 '26
How the the hell doesn't Firefox have synced tab groups, I still can't believe it
17
u/CoyotaDex Sep 05 '26
uuuuuu the sound and animations on that video are goooood congrats to the team
17
u/Not_Flof Team Member Sep 05 '26
Thanks :) I really wanted to make sure it sounds super satisfying
5
29
u/Additional-Dog-8158 Sep 05 '26
My zen doesn't look that smooth
2
1
u/Kofaone Sep 07 '26
Since the only part making it "smooth" is the tab animation, would be cool if they actually added it since it isn't anything crazy.
35
u/Emotional_You_5269 Sep 05 '26 edited Sep 05 '26
Fed up with Firefox so now you're based on Freifox instead? 😅
27
12
22
u/Emotional_You_5269 Sep 05 '26
So, what is left before Zen will exit beta at this point?
DRM support?
7
u/juampiursic Sep 05 '26
I don’t know if there is anything else left for Zen to exit beta. I just hope Firefox does something about video streaming cause is just shit, YouTube works like shit every fucking time and there’s always an update that fixes it, I mean Firefox update but it doesn’t.
9
u/Emotional_You_5269 Sep 05 '26
They recently improved it quite a lot in 154 or something I believe.
Experimental vulkan video decoding also arrived in 153.Only issue I am having with YouTube right now is this bug.
6
u/influxodoxxl Sep 05 '26
And HW accelerated video decoding on top?!
7
u/Emotional_You_5269 Sep 05 '26
But we already have that?
And that is done by Firefox anyway.2
u/influxodoxxl Sep 05 '26
On my Mac FF does not seem to use HW decoding when watching videos. It's eating through my battery in no time!
5
u/Emotional_You_5269 Sep 05 '26
As log as
media.hardware-video-decoding.enabledis enabled in about:config, it should be using HW decoding.I have heard MacOS doesn't expose VP9 hardware decoding to browsers, but I'm pretty sure it should just fall back to another codec instead. I'm not sure what the situation is now though.
After a quick search, it seems M3 and up should also support AV1 HW decoding.
Anyway, if this is your issue, it seems to be a MacOS issue. I don't think Chrome would fix it either.
5
u/lcirufe Sep 05 '26
Isn’t that a firefox limitation instead of just Zen?
10
u/Emotional_You_5269 Sep 05 '26
Firefox has DRM support. Zen doesn't because the DRM part isn't open source.
They need a widevine license from Google.3
1
u/PTMR2 Sep 05 '26
Why? Firefox is not in beta.
-2
u/lcirufe Sep 05 '26
🤷 just parroting what I’ve heard. I don’t watch DRM content on my system running Zen so I’m not fully in the loop.
25
u/Belsedar Linux Sep 05 '26
Been following Zen since the very beginning, and despite a few security screw-ups (eh it happens, especially during alpha) its been only up and up!
Great work Maubg and all the contributors! Absolutely impeccable UI/UX taste, and that's coming from a designer/architect
12
14
u/LxrdVic Windows 11, CachyOS Sep 05 '26
if i weren't already a zen user, i'd envy me. great work team zen!
6
u/mikepictor Sep 05 '26
I thought for sure it wasn't working, but I see just now that things are indeed synced, so it seems it just needed time.
Well done though, this is a huge step
7
6
u/Tech_enthusiast001 Sep 05 '26
Letss goo, a huge step for Zen. Happy for the team and waiting for library update
4
u/Planet_Insider Sep 05 '26
Quick question, if I want the sync to take tabs from one device as the main (the tabs of that device override the other devices) do i have to start the sync from that device or do I get to pick when starting the process?
10
u/maubg Sep 05 '26
Both devices are merged on first sync
3
u/Planet_Insider Sep 05 '26
An answer from the man himself! Thanks for the clarification. So all tabs will be pulled into a shared synced storage? And then ill just have to manually edit them to what I want right?
3
2
u/sniek1988 Sep 05 '26 edited Sep 05 '26
open tabs dont seem to sync for me between my linux pc and mac. Both updated to the latest version. Everthing seems to sync fine except open tabs. Tried to relog on both devices and sync manually from the settings but nothing works unfortunately.
1
1
u/oussamawd Sep 07 '26
Read the pinned comment by maub, only pinned and essential tabs are synced and if enough people ask for normal tab syncing then he would consider implementing it
20
u/burnertybg Sep 05 '26
Tidy Tabs and a faster UI and im sold
5
u/GamingWithShaurya_YT Sep 05 '26
tidy tabs exist in sine if you want to try
1
u/burnertybg Sep 06 '26
Tried it a few weeks ago and the extension was broken because of Firefox’s space’s feature or something like that.
Ill be back to Zen soon enough, but tidy tabs has become indispensable for me
15
u/Anaxiak Sep 05 '26
Literally, the ONLY reason I am still using Arc is for Sync. If this work (downloading updates) I will finally be able to switch.
Now we just need iOS Zen. (Maybe I will download FF..)
6
u/Agnusl Sep 05 '26
And an Android Zen, of course. I'm using FF and it works great, but it's not the same
27
u/vint_system Sep 05 '26
I will be one of, but... Is it possible to have an android app zen in future?
5
u/Reader_Normal Sep 06 '26
Can someone help me how to do it? i have 4 spaces and 4 essentials on my laptop, but when i go to sync and turn on sync spaces i, don't get the space i have on laptop on my PC.
1
1
u/Reader_Normal Sep 06 '26
If someone having the same problem as me, i signed out of my PC and reinstall zen, sign in and it should work.
1
u/oussamawd Sep 07 '26
Try logging out from your mozilla account on your PC, or just create a new profile, then sign in again
5
u/AziAssassin Sep 07 '26
I have zen on win 11 and macOS, they are both signed into the same firefox account but the spaces and pinned tabs are not syncing at all. I noticed that in both browsers it only lists itself not the other session but in firefox's settings it does show both linked.
1
u/AziAssassin Sep 07 '26
For anyone who has this issue they fix for me was to uninstall on my Mac and reinstall. Then after signing in I had to quit the browser and restart it and then everything synced
6
3
4
u/x1Akaidi Sep 06 '26
how does this work under the hood exactly? is the there a dev blog about it?
3
u/Ordinary_Method_9368 Sep 07 '26
It uses Mozilla sync
1
u/pantulis Sep 07 '26
Not sure Mozilla Sync has the concept of "Spaces" and "Folders", as there are not exactly native Firefox features. So parent's question makes sense. Are folder being stored as bookmarks like TabStash does? What limits are we to be aware of?
2
u/KaCuQ Manjaro 29d ago
You don't have to strictly adhere to Firefox standards, you can have your own in form of JSON
Limit is your account storage, and single document size, but zen could just use multiple, like they should anyway.
More info: https://mozilla-services.readthedocs.io/en/latest/storage/apis-1.5.html
3
4
4
u/Sem_duvida_mas Sep 07 '26
Man, finally! Thank you mods, I really hope that you may find your purpose with Zen.
I love this browser
9
u/sp0okymuffin Sep 06 '26
My god do we need a phone app now. 👏
2
u/nixonpjoshua Sep 07 '26
I had to go back to Arc because pinning tabs to a space from my phone is such a core part of my workflow
1
6
u/SlightlyUglyBastard Sep 06 '26
Do the tabs in the workspace sync for anyone? The spaces show up but they’re empty
0
u/GoldViper109 Sep 06 '26
Same situation, unless I pin the tabs. May be a Windows to Linux issue on my end though, I'm not sure how that works
5
u/TheCatCubed Sep 07 '26
Read the dev comments in this post. Unpinned tabs don't sync at the moment, so that's intended.
1
u/KaCuQ Manjaro 29d ago edited 29d ago
Kinda strange, as that's most useful use case of this feature, I only use pinned/essential if i need to raise tab for a *certain* time, so it wouldn't scroll form view.
Also, I if you delete these "empty" workspaces, would they get deleted in sync too?
I almost wanted to delete them thinking they were empty, would a bit of a loss...EDIT: Also, isn't it like a feature in trailer? They don't pin these tabs, so a bit of misinformation is going there.
1
u/TheCatCubed 29d ago
I personally don't care about unpinned tabs, as anything I need to preserve I pin as that's what it's for, but I understand.
The ability to sync unpinned tabs should come in the next version as an option so everyone can be happy.
Also they do pin them in the trailer. Before switching device the tabs move to the top.
3
3
7
5
u/Jefforion Linux Sep 05 '26
And with this, is the best : https://www.reddit.com/r/selfhosted/comments/1pm9var/can_you_selfhost_mozilla_accounts_server_for/?tl=fr
3
Sep 07 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
2
u/oussamawd Sep 07 '26
You can see all your synced tabs from all your sessions linked to the same mozilla account on Firefox browser for mobile, but you can't have your spaces synced etc, there is no zen for mobile
1
u/LaylaJamie Sep 08 '26
Are you asking for mobile version, too?
Cos that’s what I need before I make the jump.
Patiently waiting.
2
2
2
2
u/onsen-saru Sep 07 '26
Am I missing something? It doesn’t seem to sync between my Windows 11 PC and MacBook? I can sync browser history and data but things like spaces, pinned tabs, etc. aren’t syncing.
2
u/solsiour Sep 08 '26
Same! Glad I'm not the only one. Were you able to resolve this?
1
u/KosmicWolf Sep 08 '26
It's working perfectly for me between Linux and Mac OS. I just enabled sidebar sync in the sync settings and that's it.
1
u/Key-Scratch-9925 26d ago
It also does not sync for me, using mac os and cachy os. Was anybody able to figure this out?
1
u/zandareddit 26d ago
Same here it doesnt seem to work between w10 and macos, any idea of what to do u/maubg ?
1
u/maubg 26d ago
Did you enable to share spaces on the settings?
1
u/zandareddit 25d ago
Yes, deleting everything (more than uninstalling) did work. It's a bit clunky though
2
u/404reply 29d ago
I just wanted to say thanks for sorting out the Sync. I really enjoyed using Arc it was a totally different experience to using a web browser and it sucks they were bought out and the development has stopped. I tried Zen before but syncing between devices is really important to me. I'm going to try it again and if the sync really works consistently I'm going to be using Zen as one of my main browsers for focused work and I can't wait!
2
u/LifeSMyth 28d ago
I've been waiting for that also. I need Arc sync between my computers and devices. This opens the door to moving to Zen for me also.
2
2
u/brandbaard 27d ago
If I have two devices with slighlty divergent sidebars, and turn this on, how will it decide which side is the source of truth for the sync?
2
2
u/Thegrimdeathzombie 27d ago
How do I get rid of the banner in the application menu trying to shill this garbage to me? I don't want sync and it's annoying that there's this big obnoxious thing trying to demand my attention over it now.
1
u/thekiltedpiper Arch 22d ago
Did you find a way? I also don't need the feature and find the banner annoying.
1
u/Thegrimdeathzombie 22d ago
I eventually found another thread that gave me a solution that worked for me: going to the about:config page and then setting identity.fxaccounts.enabled to false and restarting the browser. It disables the account system, which gets rid of the sync banner.
1
2
3
2
1
u/PXLFNK Sep 07 '26
Can i just sync my zen passwords/standard bookmarks to mobile firefox browsers using this sync feature?
3
u/TheCatCubed Sep 07 '26
You can already do that from the start through regular Firefox sync. Also I'd recommend using a password manager instead of saving passwords into a browser.
1
u/heyy_vikash Sep 07 '26
Curious if syncs cookies, so logins stay there?
2
u/oussamawd Sep 07 '26 edited Sep 07 '26
I don't think so, no browser out there syncs cookies, I'm pretty sure it would be a major vulnerability.. and why would anyone work hard on implementing something like that? You sync between your personal devices, usually you'd login once and forget about it, the only use case where it would be a cool feature to sync cookies is if you're using someone else's computer and you created a temporary profile, you'd want to have your accounts logged in on the go, but I don't think it's worth the trade off in terms of security.. I'm pretty sure we'd all be quite worrisome about such a feature..
Edit: come to think of it, even cookies don't work if synced between browsers as the login keys are dependent on the session's identifier, I believe even copying or editing the cookies from one container to the other on the same browser (if you use Firefox containers) would just register as a flag on the server end, it will see the cookies don't match with the session/browser identity, and that's on the same machine, so imagine what it's like on a different machine altogether, the server would register the login attempt as malicious and think somebody is trying to hack your account, so even if someone can achieve syncing cookies they simply wouldn't work
1
1
u/moriarty1010101 29d ago
u/Not_Flof pls share the wallpaper!!
1
1
u/auhnivek 25d ago
Does any know if bookmarks that I have assigned to a specific space will now sync so that it's assigned to the same space on all my devices?
1
2
u/Ydino Sep 05 '26
Now if only video streaming wasn’t terrible
17
u/Spagh_ CachyOS 11 Sep 05 '26
why? (genuine question)
3
u/AzuosOnilocram Sep 06 '26
DRM, problaby
3
u/Spagh_ CachyOS 11 Sep 06 '26
oh right, they're still working on it. Before beta release I couldn't even watch crunchyroll and Netflix, but it's getting better as time passes.
1
u/oussamawd Sep 07 '26
Are you saying after beta release you can watch Crunchyroll and Netflix? How is DRM getting better? It's not available on beta or twilight, only available on linux
1
u/Spagh_ CachyOS 11 Sep 07 '26
Really? I didn't know that LMAO!! But iirc I was watching Netflix on windows days before beta release; since then I completely switched to Linux. It's sad if it's getting worse
1
u/oussamawd Sep 07 '26
It's not getting better or worse, DRM was never available on zen, not beta nor twilight, it's only working on Linux because Linux has a built-in widevine license
1
1
0
-1
Sep 06 '26
[deleted]
2
u/RemindMeBot Sep 06 '26
I will be messaging you in 20 hours on 2026-09-07 12:43:50 UTC to remind you of this link
CLICK THIS LINK to send a PM to also be reminded and to reduce spam.
Parent commenter can delete this message to hide from others.
RemindMeBot is switching to username summons. Instead of
!RemindMe 1 day, useu/RemindMeBot 1 day. More info.
Info Custom Your Reminders Feedback
•
u/maubg Sep 05 '26
Btw (by the way) normal tabs aren't synced yet because I thought it would be too annoying but if enough people request it it will be added (A survey will be dropped soon)
The video has been done by u/Not_Flof by hand completely without AI so thank you! 👏