Browsers - The First Line of Defense to The Internet

There is no law that says you only need to use one browser.

My Recommmendation

Use at least two browsers. The one you use most often should either be Firefox with privacy tweaks, Brave or Safari with tweaks on a Mac. The other one could be Edge (which is already installed in Windows) or Chrome. These you will use if something doesn't work right in the main browser.

Firefox

Download and install it. Skip the steps until they stop coming up. Open the settings by going to the three horizontal lines in the upper right hand corner.
Here are the changes I usually make.
Uncheck open firefox automatically when your computer starts up.
Then click Search in the left pane. Switch to DuckDuckGo for the default search engine. Change the rest of the settings in this section to ones you are comfortable with. (I uncheck anything that has the word "suggestions" in it.)
Take a quick look in Privacy and Security and make any changes. Ironically, I don't change much here.
Go to Passwords and autofill. Uncheck Ask to Save Passwords as you will use either the Bitwarden or Proton Pass extensions to handle this. Uncheck Save and autofill payment info and addresses. These changes are usually sufficient for most people. The next step is to add the extensions you will need.

Essential Extensions

Click the little puzzle piece in the Firefox bar to access the Manage Extensions area. Consider adding the following.
Proton Pass (or Bitwarden), Ublock Origin or Ublock Origin Lite, DecentralEyes and Privacy Badger.
You can go crazy with extensions but these will get you started. If you want to take it a step further, just use startpage and\or duckduckgo (notice I left out google) and search for privacy tweaks for Firefox. That will keep you busy for awhile.