zypper remove --clean-deps removes automatically installed requirements when removing a package. zypper packages --unneeded will show a list of packages no longer required.
Setting solver.onlyRequires to true in /etc/zypp.conf does not install recommends - it’s way less of a problem than on Debian/Ubuntu due to not recommending half the world, but still useful. Setting solver.cleandepsOnRemove will automatically remove automatically installed deps when removing a package (i.e., like always specifying --clean-deps).
I mainly used chrome for a few years when Firefox dropped it as I was so angry about them at that point. Went back to Firefox eventually as it still is the less bad browser, but compared to old one it still is shit. 10 years later we still don’t have abilities for stuff like overriding keybindings back.