Flakes

The pitch here is coherent: clicking is slow, so Flakes ships vim-style navigation (h/j/k/l), link hints on f, and a ⌘K command palette that absorbs history search, commands, URL entry and AI prompts into one keystroke. That combination is the real product. Once the muscle memory lands, tab switching, window management and page scrolling all stop requiring the trackpad, and Focus Mode (⌘Enter) paired with default-on ad blocking gives you a reading surface with the chrome removed. Drift AI is the differentiator worth testing. Most in-browser assistants answer about the page you're on; Flakes reads your open tabs and answers across all of them, which is exactly the failure mode of tab-heavy research — you know the fact is in one of fourteen tabs and you can't remember which. Real-time page translation and longer conversations about viewed content are the supporting acts. The engineering choice matters too. SwiftUI and WebKit rather than an Electron shell means instant cold start, smooth scrolling and a small memory footprint — the thing every Chromium reskin promises and rarely delivers. Privacy is handled sensibly: local browsing, ad blocking by default, private mode isolated in memory with no history retained, and AI described as optional. The honest weaknesses are structural, not cosmetic. macOS 14+ only, with no Windows, Linux, mobile or web version, so a mixed-device life needs a second browser anyway. The site documents no extension support, which excludes extension-dependent work such as password managers and dev tooling. There's no documented cross-platform sync and no team or collaboration layer. And the vendor is candid that Flakes is early — the feedback section carries three testimonials, not a user base chart. Treat it as a fast, focused companion to Safari or Arc, not a wholesale replacement, and expect to file feedback rather than read a deep changelog.