I spent five months using Surfingkeys, and while it offered a lot, I’m now back on Vimium C. Here's why.
Why I Switched to Surfingkeys
There was one killer use case: opening dropdowns with hints, especially in tools like Taiga — specifically the status field. Vimium C couldn’t interact with those properly. Surfingkeys could. That alone made the switch worth trying.
Bonus points for Surfingkeys’ feature set:
- Full JavaScript scripting
- CLI-like interfaces for bookmarks/history
- Custom keybindings for almost anything
Basically, it gave me full control of the browser.
Why I Switched Back
Over time, that control turned into clutter.
Too Many Features I Don’t Use
Surfingkeys tries to be an entire platform. I only needed better link hinting — not a terminal inside my browser, not a custom popup renderer, not fuzzy search for bookmarks. Most of the features sat unused, just bloating the config and UI.
Maintenance Fatigue
Configuring Surfingkeys felt like managing a personal browser extension. Too much overhead for small tweaks. Debugging broken mappings on some websites became a time sink.
Performance and UX
- Hints were occasionally slow
- Some keys didn’t register right away
- On certain SPAs, the hint system was unreliable
Not deal-breakers on their own, but annoying enough to break flow.
Why Vimium C Still Wins
After going back to Vimium C, things just felt fast, clean, and reliable.
- Hints are instant
- Config is minimal and intuitive
- Works on 95% of the web out of the box
- No bloat. No weird UI
I can’t open dropdowns in Taiga anymore, but honestly, that trade-off is worth it for how smooth everything else feels.
TL;DR
Surfingkeys gave me one key feature (dropdowns in Taiga), but buried it under layers of stuff I didn’t need. Vimium C might be simpler, but that’s exactly why I’m using it again.