Everyone is putting AI in their browsers now. Good (maybe even great!) browsers have been discontinued so users can focus on AI.

I’m not opposed to using AI agents for all sorts of things, but I don’t feel comfortable giving it nigh-unfettered access to the web. I’m not ready to let LLMs take on life-altering responsibilities like booking flights, looking at my banking sites, or reading my emails. I don’t trust their data retention policies with potentially sensitive context like calendars or emails. Nobody’s

So I don’t want it in my web browser, which is where most of this work gets done in 2026. I’ve been using Firefox at home and Arc at work, and they’ve got different problems. Arc is over. “The Browser Company” has gone all in on an AI Browser that’s not dissimilar to OpenAI’s browser. Firefox added AI features in November and is only now adding controls that can give you some control over data sharing.

Fortunately, someone recommended Zen to me. Arc’s approach to tabs always clicked with me: every view of a profile, even in a different window, has the same tab set. You can use multiple profiles (“spaces”) to manage different tab groups, and different sign-in contexts. Zen’s latest release uses the same behavior, and it’s delightful. It has a simple but very useful split-view feature. I use it for things like reading the meeting notes and having the video call in the same window, or comparing two related documents without having to tab back and forth. Where it has any AI features at all, they are limited and require advanced settings to turn on. You’re not going to get them intruding on you, at least for now.

It turns out I’m not the only one who’s had this experience.