Browsing the web has certainly become one of our favorite daily activities, and among the best browsers, Google Chrome has the biggest market share worldwide. Like Qwant, Safari, the old Internet Explorer or the recent Microsoft Edge, Sidekick is a new type of browser that’s making a name for itself. But what sets it apart?
Choosing your browser: why Sidekick?
As with any application, it’s your needs that will guide your choice of browser.
And for the Sidekick browser, the answer is simple: it’s made for online work! If you’re working on the web on Windows or MacOS, whether you’re a freelancer or an employee, a youtuber or a community manager, I’m sure you’re wasting time on a whole host of annoying little things: too many open tabs, slow page loading speeds, constant notifications, unwanted pop-up ads, and so on.
There are various browsers on the market, but whether it’s Google Chrome, Opera, Brave, Mozilla Firefox or any other web browser, they’re all search engines first and foremost. None of the major browsers was designed as a workspace.
What are the benefits of Sidekick?
Have you ever dreamed of an alternative browser dedicated to productivity, with an organized and intuitive user interface?
Now it’s here, it’s called Sidekick, and it just might win you over and become your favorite browser. Let me introduce you to this new browser and all its new features to enhance your working experience when browsing different URLs…
I’m not going to talk about browser configuration in this article, as I think that’s something that’s specific to each and every one of us, but I’ll just give you a quick tour.
1- Easily organize your Apps
Let’s start with the main point: app management. I love it, it’s really the stroke of genius of the Sidekick browser that sets it apart from all the others. Are you used to surfing from one tab to another to find the apps you use on a daily basis?
Now, whether it’s Notion, Telegram, WhatsApp, Gmail, Trello, Slack, Discord, Google Calendar, Loom, your CRM, or any other app, you’ll be able to isolate and anchor them in a sidebar on the left. You can add any web applications you like.
Everything is fully customizable, and your favorite apps are no longer drowned in the middle of your other web browsing tabs. Just click on the logo to open the app you need. It reminds me of the Mac Os X toolbar known as the Dock.
2- Multi-account management
A little icing on the cake: you’ll be able to set up multiple accounts. Do you have several Gmail or Twitter accounts? Nothing could be simpler: in just 1 click, you can access any of your accounts, without having to log out and log back in each time. Trust me, it’s a real time-saver!
3- Split View
Want to work on 2 apps or tabs at the same time?
It’s possible: you can split your window in two. It’s called Split View, and it’s really quite practical. Open Notion on one side and another web page on the other, or Gmail and Calendar. I’ll talk more about this below.
4- Group your open tabs by theme
The Sidekick browser adds another way of managing your bookmarks: rather than searching and re-opening the bookmarks you use frequently, you can group your tabs of the same theme under a single browsing session, which you can open or close with a single click.
Planning a trip to Andalusia? Have you opened 15 tabs to plan everything? Create an Andalusia button, click on this shortcut and you’ll find all your tabs. Navigating from one theme to another becomes child’s play.
5- Advanced search
It’s a feature that will save you a lot of time. Instead of doing a default page-by-page search, use Sidekick’s integrated browser search bar: a thorough search will be made of all your open tabs, apps and workspaces.
What’s more, when you close your browser, Sidekick remembers all your open tabs so you don’t lose your website history: no more searching through browsing history.
6- Stay focused, don't be disturbed
As I’m sure you’ve noticed, we live in a world where it’s becoming increasingly complicated to stay focused while working. Solicitations and notifications are everywhere, and there’s nothing worse for losing focus and undermining productivity.
In the bottom left-hand corner of your Sidekick browser, you’ll find an icon that lets you turn off all notifications. No more Discord, WhatsApp… everything’s grayed out! You can finally stay focused and efficient. This is a feature we’ve seen before on Mac OS, and it’s sure to become a standard feature in the future.
7- Privacy policy
Just like the Epic Browser, the Sidekick browser is concerned with the security of your data and the protection of your privacy. The Sidekick browser directly integrates an ad blocker. You can also activate tracker blocking, eliminating the need to go to advanced settings, delete history and clear cache regularly.
What’s more, a VPN is integrated into the browser. Of course, private browsing is also available, a feature that is standard in today’s web browsers.
8- A very fast browser
Thanks to its ad blocker and intelligent tab management, slow-loading web pages are a thing of the past. To optimize RAM and save CPU, the Sidekick browser will suspend tabs that aren’t needed, and won’t load apps only from the tabs in your session.
9- A Chrome-compatible browser
An important point to note is that the Sidekick browser source code is built on the Chromium engine, so its compatibility with Chrome is 100%. So you’ll be able to recover all your Chrome extensions.
Why choose the paid version of Sidekick?
The Sidekick browser is available for Windows, Mac OS and Linux. Note that there is both a free and a paid version. The paid version is especially useful for collaborative use where synchronization is important, for example for a team of developers. Each user then has access only to the tools they need.
Coming back to the split view mentioned above, it should be noted that this is one of the paid options.
To conclude this article
Is Sidekick the best browser out there? Well, I’ll leave you to launch the browser and form your own opinion, and don’t hesitate to leave a review in the comments to this article.
As far as I’m concerned, it’s particularly useful when I’m carrying out SEO audits, especially in split view mode, as part of my freelance SEO consulting activity.
As our friends would say Les Inconnus (French comic trio), but how can you tell if it’s a good browser or a bad one? In practice, you’ll need to get to grips with the Sidekick browser…
It’s a safe bet that with this first truly online-focused browser, Sidekick will take an ever-increasing share of the market and rank among the best modern browsers… and that you’ll soon be ditching your current browser yourself and making Sidekick your default browser. Let us know if that’s the case!
At the time of writing, we’re at browser version 104 on the Mac, and it won’t be the last version of the Sidekick browser. There are sure to be plenty of other interesting developments added in the future.
Remember, this tool is designed to optimize your workflow, so there’s no version for Android or ios.
Here’s the link to the site Sidekick if you’d like to test it.