Since the arrival of iPadOS 15, iPad owners in particular have an annoyance: pull-to-refresh in Safari. Especially in combination with a mouse, you often lose content on a service running in the cloud. So time for an alternative! We introduce you to some browsers without pull-to-refresh.
Apple has come up with the idea that pulling down from the top of a page is an excellent idea to refresh the page in question. So pull to refresh. Sounds funny? Not when you consider that this trick also works via a mouse. Only then is it enough to scroll just a little too far up with the mouse wheel, in other words: the chance that it happens by accident is more than life-sized. And that leads to several complainers.
Think of people who use a CMS as wordpress post a new message. If you scroll too far up, the page will be refreshed and everything you typed will be gone. In that case, it is hoped that the automatic backup took place not too long ago and that most of your text and other matters can be found as drafts. Otherwise, it’s crying out and starting over.
Other Roads to Rome
As a professional (and more serious hobbyist) you are obviously not waiting for an uncertainty factor caused by a gimmick. Unfortunately, Apple has also decided in its infinite wisdom that this ‘feature’ cannot be turned off for Safari.
Fortunately, there are alternative browsers available for iPadOS (and iOS) that don’t suffer from this forced pull-to-refresh. Incidentally, there is always a limitation under iOS and iPadOS: alternative browsers must use Apple’s Webkit to render pages. Nothing in itself, but it does mean that Chrome or Firefox, for example, do not use their own systems under the hood. Which can have advantages and disadvantages.
The advantage is in any case that Webkit is fully optimized for the devices it runs on. In other words: fast and energy efficient at the same time.
Two dropouts: Firefox and Maxthon
A browser of name and fame is without a doubt Firefox. And an iPadOS/iOS version is also available. Unfortunately, this one suffers from the same problem as Safari: it implements pull-to-refresh by default and this option cannot be disabled. Which makes the whole thing a case of Russian roulette for serious commitment to content production. As beautiful as the rest of the browser is, due to the lack of a simple refresh switch, we don’t recommend using Firefox for critical work.
Maxthon may also be a well-known name for users of iOS and iPadOS. The company has been offering a browser just about since the early days of the iPhone and iPad. This quickly leads to a familiar feeling in the app store, especially in view of the positive reactions. However, a strong warning: the head office is located in Beijing. Or do you want to run all your daily web activities via a browser made in China? Doesn’t seem like a good plan to us. Especially not when you consider that you regularly have to enter passwords for web apps, banking and so on. In short: don’t use it is our advice.
brave
brave is a well-known ‘alternative’ browser that is not only loved by iOS and iPadOS. In terms of user interface, you will find all the features you could wish for. The focus on privacy is especially nice, you cannot be followed by advertisers. Searching is done through the anonymous DuckDuckGo by default, while tabs are opened in privacy mode by default. All this does not affect the speed of the whole, so you don’t have to worry about that.
It also has many nice extras such as creating playlists filled with various media. Also useful is the menu button (accessible via ††Create PDFyou can immediately create a PDF file of the opened page in one step – without going through the print preview.
To disable the offending pull-to-refresh (which appears to be enabled by default in the most recent versions of Brave as well) tap the button with the three dots, followed by a tap Settings†Then put the switch behind Enable Pull-to-refresh from. You won’t have to worry about that anymore!
Chrome
Google Chrome for iPadOS has – at the time of writing – no pull-to-refresh on board at all. So you don’t have to be afraid of anything in that regard. The only downside to Chrome is that it’s provided by Google, which is a notorious data collector. Fortunately, you can turn off that behavior the first time you install the app (to what extent this is respected is of course always a bit of a wait).
Also you can better leave the sync option off, also off privacy considerations†For the rest it is a very usable browser. In terms of settings, there is actually nothing available, so you can’t tweak much unfortunately. It’s nice to have the option to go through the †button at the top right of the screen and then History to be able to precisely clear your browser history. Per item, per time frame or just everything. We would like to see that reflected in every browser!
edge
edge from Microsoft is a somewhat ‘complicated’ browser. Because Edge has Chrome’s engine under the hood. Only then under iOS and iPadOS that is Webkit again. What we do find – very satisfied – is that pull-to-refresh is missing, just like in the Chrome browser. Also no options to turn it on.
It is also striking that Edge has a lot more setting options than Chrome itself. And that in combination with the precisely tweakable history eraser, which makes it an interesting browser in itself. Less successful is that on the product page in the App Store we see that quite a bit of data is exchanged with Microsoft. Some of it (such as browser history) is privacy sensitive. So look before you start.
If you use Edge as your default browser under Windows, you might consider signing in with the same Microsoft account you use for Windows. In itself, you deliver even more data to Microsoft, but if you are already a Windows and Edge user, it doesn’t matter much anymore.
Finally, Edge uses Bing as its search engine by default, to use Google you need to select a different default search engine in the settings.
Relatively limited choice
With that, we’ve pretty much had the really interesting replacements for Safari. Many alternative browsers that you will find in the App Store are of poor quality, and/or have not been updated for years. Some of the alternatives come from China, which is often of no use because the user interface is in Chinese or coal English (not to mention, of course, the security risks you run with it).
Another part of the alternative people is very specifically focused on privacy, such as Onion Browser†Very nice for that purpose, but due to all kinds of restrictive and encrypting activities, not really suitable for CMS work, for example. Of the ‘big four’ Firefox, Chrome, Brave and Edge, Firefox falls out due to the lack of the option to disable pull-to-refresh. Brave seems to be the most obvious and most privacy-friendly alternative!
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