Helium Browser

by spacebuffer • 10 months ago

611 547 10 months ago

haolez• 10 months ago

What's the catch? Looks too good to be true.

webstrand2• 10 months ago

It looks like a pretty normal chromium variant to me? It's nice to see the work of ungoogled-chromium given a nicer skin.

nextworddev3• 10 months ago

It’s playing the Browser Company playbook

DauntingPear72• 10 months ago

Highly doubt that, as they’re already known in the OSS community. Browser Co. expanded as fast as possible without any way to make revenue, then ditched their flagship product to make a bad agentic browser

FinnKuhn2• 10 months ago

Can someone explain to me how this differentiates itself from (ungoogled) Chromium with a few tweaks?

How does it compare to Firefox privacy wise being based on chromium?

system7rocks• 10 months ago

Same. I generally avoid Chrome-based browsers on all devices.

bangaladore2• 10 months ago

What privacy concerns do you have with Chromium?

godelski10• 10 months ago

Google

The noun, not the verb

ghm21992• 10 months ago

Does it have manifest V2 like CNAM filtering? And if it's chromium based how is it going to support back port of features that are making it to chromium without investment in a robust dev team?

mantra2• 10 months ago

They say they'll support MV2 "as long as possible".

webstrand2• 10 months ago

It's based on ungoogled-chromium which applies https://github.com/ungoogled-software/ungoogled-chromium/blo... to retain manifest v2 features. They're likely dependent on ungoogled-chromium for maintaining this feature.

MYEUHD• 10 months ago

It's based on ungoogled-chromium and about 3 people are working on it.

https://github.com/imputnet/helium

koakuma-chan2• 10 months ago

And it's written in Python.

_--__--__2• 10 months ago

From a few months of use I think qutebrowser is good enough to prove that a python web browser is not inherently a bad idea.

Barrin92• 10 months ago

it's a few hundred lines worth of scripts to produce an ungoogled chromium with some nicer defaults, why wouldn't it, in case pointing that out is meant to be a criticism.

joshjob42• 10 months ago

Actually it's mostly patch files but they're ignored by github.

SchemaLoad• 10 months ago

I would not feel comfortable with my browsing data being in the hands of 3 random people.

worthless-trash• 10 months ago

What about 10,000 ?

its-summertime• 10 months ago

I'm guessing it doesn't support certificate revocation very well as ungoogled-chromium has/had some issues with that.

removing every google url in a browser without replacements will have such downsides

cush2• 10 months ago

about 3 people are working on it

Hard pass. Arc had an entire dev team with serious investors and couldn't just focus on building a browser

diffrinse• 10 months ago

That's because they had serious investors

NSPG911• 10 months ago

had an entire dev team with serious investors

thats literally why we get slop, because companies focus on investors rather than users? when there are 3 people working on it, they would listen more to the community

ghm21992• 10 months ago

And the biggest problem with extensions is their security model of permissions. How is this solving for that?

tyre• 10 months ago

How will they make money? Or is this always meant to be OSS community supported?

The challenge is that people have to get paid and infrastructure to build things costs money. Looks like there are only two people full-time at the company right now, though even then eventually they’ll need some revenue stream.

I love this project, but to have confidence that it stays that way it would be nice to see how they’ll replace they’ll stay afloat.

brcmthrowaway• 10 months ago

Why does a browser need to be continually updated?

Is Google/W3C adding more features and busy work to keep browser developers employed?

blackqueeriroh• 10 months ago

Lol yes

johnisgood3• 10 months ago

Yes. I left a feedback about a website posted on HN, turns out it works just fine on the latest version of Vivaldi, but not a previous version from a few months ago. So yeah, gotta keep it updated. :(

pantulis• 10 months ago

Is Google/W3C adding more features and busy work to keep browser developers employed?

Most of those changes would be supported by the underlying rendering engine, and the only ones doing that afaik are Ladybird.

It's simply that building and mantaining _the rest_ of what we now expect a modern browser to be is staggeringly hard.

sunaookami• 10 months ago

Security updates to fix zero-days? Google releases those very often and such forks take a long time to integrate them (even big forks) so I would not trust such a small team.

ghqst• 10 months ago

My biggest problem with Thorium was lack of updates, so I hope Helium is able to remain consistent with updates. Congrats on the launch, cobalt crew!

MountDoom• 10 months ago

What makes me a bit uneasy about the project is that the website doesn't explain who is building it. For most open-source, I think that would be fine. But browsers auto-update, so their vendors essentially have the continued ability to run code on your machine. You want some confidence that they won't get owned and won't sell the access to bad actors down the line, so there is an element of personal trust.

All the website gives me is the name of a Wyoming LLC, Wyoming being one of the states you incorporate in if you don't want others to be able to find out who runs the company.

Granted, you can find out a bit more on Github, but in general, if you're building privacy- and security-critical tech... I think you ought to own it.

efilife• 10 months ago

It really isn't hard to find. I went to the browser's github page and then the repo author.

https://github.com/imputnet

I now found who exactly manages this (and it turns out colbalt, too! awesome downloader)

https://github.com/wukko https://github.com/dumbmoron

jsheard• 10 months ago

and it turns out colbalt, too!

And https://meow.camera

hdjrudni2• 10 months ago

Oh..that's crazy. I just assumed it was the makers of Kagi search.

biotinker• 10 months ago

You found the authors' screen names and some other things they've made.

That's not finding who they are. No one has signed their names, like their real names, to this. Who are they? Intelligence agents? For which country? There's no way to know.

zenmac• 10 months ago

Well it is just one those element naming chrome fork. Kinda like:

https://iridiumbrowser.de/ But that one looks have not being updated in a while. But what is the point forking Chrome browser now days since manifest 3?

I switched back to firefox/librawolf for now.

snapplebobapple2• 10 months ago

Try zen browser its my favorite firefox fork with only a few extensions

cwillu• 10 months ago

For what it's worth: “All Chromium extensions are supported and work right away, by default, including all MV2 extensions. We'll keep support for MV2 extensions for as long as possible.”

Whether that's worth much is of course another matter.

adrr3• 10 months ago

Who is paying for it?

alpb• 10 months ago

Agreed, and my concern is not a "NSA is monitoring my activity" but more along the lines of whether they have enough funding to staff security research and response for this browser.

ha1zum• 10 months ago

Exactly my concern as well

Tepix2• 10 months ago

My thoughts exactly. I read on their website that they're a two person team who care about privacy. But how do they finance their work on these tools? Are they still figuring it out? Do they have a sustainable business model?

ayaros2• 10 months ago

Why did anyone think it was a good idea to put tabs in the title bar. How the hell am I supposed to easily drag a window if I have 100 tabs open? Who the hell thought this was a good idea? Why do I feel like the only sane human being left on Earth? Why is this project continuing to use this horrible UI convention?

How are they going to make money or enshittify this in the future or sell it off to an evil billion dollar corporation who will sell my data off to god knows who?

</rant> :/ ...the site design is nice at least.

DHolzer• 10 months ago

I would hate to have a 40px title bar doing nothing except wasting space on my screen. I've been using this layout for years, and I didn't even consider that anyone could have an issue with this until I read your statement.

I'm not saying that you are wrong to disregard it due to your personal preferences, but please consider that this might not be such a horrible design as you make it out to be. Also, you can be certain that you are not the only sane person left - I think it's just that most of them don't show up on boards and forums.

bigstrat2003• 10 months ago

The parent post is overly strongly worded, but I agree with the meat of it: tabs should not be in the title bar of the window. It's worse usability for a space savings that really isn't relevant because it's so small.

ayaros2• 10 months ago

Just because it is not doing anything at the moment doesn't mean it doesn't serve an important, necessary purpose. For a windowed application environment to be functional and usable, there needs to be an easy way to drag windows around the screen. When you start moving things into that space, it makes the system harder to use.

A once-simple action which required minimal thought now requires you to parse an arbitrarily populated area of the screen and find a tiny gap within a litany of buttons and controls and carefully drag that part of the window. If you make a slight mistake and click on a tab or button, the unwanted activation of that control (e.g. switching to a new tab) serves to needlessly penalize the user.

This is not just an issue with web browsers now, but seemingly everywhere. It's been a big issue in the macOS Finder for a while now.

At the very least, Firefox still gives me the option to show the native window title bar, which I very much appreciate. It's certainly not the sexiest part of the UI, given the native element clashes a bit with FF's controls, but at least it's usable! This is an issue that could be solved by giving people a choice via a simple toggle... Most often, the option isn't there.

I'm sorry people have downvoted my post here a bit, and I agree it was a bit strongly worded, but I won't apologize for venting some frustration at what I see as the perpetuation of user-hostile design choices like this.

rpgbr2• 10 months ago

Firefox does that too and avoid this issue reserving a small space on right site of title bar. Not the end of the world.

csin• 10 months ago

Thanks for this reply. This comment chain sent me through an existential crisis.

OP made it sound like tabs in the title bar was a new innovation.

"The parent post is overly strongly worded, but I agree with the meat of it: tabs should not be in the title bar of the window. It's worse usability for a space savings that really isn't relevant because it's so small."

I was nodding to this.

But I'm also someone who cares about vertical screen real estate (enough to call it vertical screen real estate).

So I was in a hypocritical conundrum. Do I care about the title bar, or do not care about the title bar?

Check firefox. Wait wtf, my firefox has no title bar! Did I customize it myself, I don't remember removing it???

johnisgood3• 10 months ago

There is some space you can click on for dragging the window, or on Linux just hold Alt and move the window. I have an application for Windows that allows me to do the same.

xigoi3• 10 months ago

I’d rather ask, why are desktop environments continuing to use the horrible UI convention of stacking window managers? In a tiling window manager, there is no reason to waste space on a draggable window bar.

eviks• 10 months ago

How the hell am I supposed to easily drag a window if I have 100 tabs open?

By holding a key and clicking anywhere in the window area.

Who the hell thought this was a good idea?

Anyone who uses a better dragging method and doesn't want to waste space

efreak5• 10 months ago

Why did anyone think it was a good idea to put tabs in the title bar.

Because we decided it was a good idea to keep making monitors wider and wider and wider without making them any taller, and not everyone wants vertical tabs.

You can pry my 16:10 monitor from my cold dead fingers. Give me a 3:2 and you'll never get it back.

Why do you have 100 tabs open in the same window, anyways? Use tab groups and profiles, with a secondary window for session-tabs that'll get closed soon. Having too many tabs is like having too many desktop icons, but worse.

barbazoo2• 10 months ago

I just can't go back to horizontal tabs anymore.

the_real_cher• 10 months ago

What are you using instead?

DauntingPear72• 10 months ago

Probably Zen, as Arc is dead

barbazoo2• 10 months ago

Arc

Unai• 10 months ago

Not OP, but I use vertical tabs with Vivaldi.

Pretty happy with it; I tried basically all browsers out there, fully switching to them for some time even if I didn't even like them, and after all that time I found Vivaldi the best overall browser right now (for me).

trenchpilgrim• 10 months ago

Firefox added vertical tabs recently

vovavili4• 10 months ago

Edge for me, since it has the single best implementation of vertical tabs on the market, with smooth expand on hover. Every time I try other browsers, I am immediately put off by how lacking in polish vertical tabs feel in comparison and go back.

_def• 10 months ago

vertical tabs never really worked for me. What would you say are the biggest benefits for you?

setsewerd2• 10 months ago

Not the parent commenter but

1. Great if you have a wider screen (could never do it on my old 13" Macbook Air, for a 15" it's pretty good but for a 24" iMac it's perfect). But if you need the space youjust have it set to minimize by default, maximize on hover.

2. See the titles of your browser tabs, which is great when you are like me and never have fewer than 30 tabs open at once.

3. Easier to select browser tabs when you have many of them open (ie they don't get squished unreadably small)

al_borland5• 10 months ago

I still use horizontal tabs, but have dabbled with vertical tabs. The biggest benefit I saw was that tab names stayed a consistent width and readable, no matter now many tabs I had open. With horizontal tabs, once you have over 10-15, you’re kind of flying blind.

gwbas1c5• 10 months ago

Basically, it's easier to see tab titles when you have a LOT of tabs open.

They really only work if you have a large monitor. I use a 50" 4k TV and two other monitors, and a 15" laptop. When I'm on smaller screens I have to hide the tabs.

int_19h3• 10 months ago

Your typical screen today is wider than most content on the web needs it to be, so most web pages render as tall columns with ample margins. Vertical tabs use up that space efficiently to show a large number of tabs in a way that makes it much easier to see all your tabs at a glance without losing track because the titles are shortened into nothing.

asimovDev• 10 months ago

i can't wait for Safari to add proper horizontal tabs. There's a sidebar with tabs but you still have compact tabs taking up precious vertical space

al_borland5• 10 months ago

They didn’t really take up any space in Sequoia, but Tahoe brought them back. I guess people didn’t like how Sequoia was doing things.

I find the Tahoe tab bar pretty ugly.

tchbnl• 10 months ago

Having the option to set Kagi as my search engine right away is nice. I wish more browsers included Kagi as an option.

al_borland5• 10 months ago

My biggest gripe with Safari is that it only handles the few blessed search engines Apple has chosen.

On my personal systems I can use the extension to hack Kagi support in there, but it’s a bit of an ugly solution.

On my work laptop, we aren’t allowed to use the App Store, so I can’t get the extension. This means if I want to use Safari and Kagi, I need to go to the actual Kagi homepage, which is a very annoying behavior pattern.

I used Firefox for a while at work because of this, but now that’s been blocked too. I’m trying really hard not to give in and use Chrome, but at this point, it would make my work life easier. It supports adding other search engines natively, which is quite ironic.

I submitted feedback to Apple about this. They have integrated some of my feedback into past releases (silence unknown callers, most notably), but they must have some silly business reason for not allowing this, which is very disappointing.

Daedren• 10 months ago

We'll keep support for MV2 extensions for as long as possible.

This doesn't particularly give people any confidence in your product if even the devs don't know how long they can hold the line. Why not fork Firefox like Zen?

indiebat• 10 months ago

I know this is unfair to firefox, majority of enterprise software now (including and starting with Microsoft teams) outright say do not support firefox or have ‘limited’ support whatever that means.

For anyone working remotely like me, teams is a crucial piece of software (however bad it is). So as much as I like Firefox and legends that started it and religiously developed it over the years, bottom line, I can’t use it now.

Some maybe majority of blame falls on Mozilla, they let it stagnate and focus on cosmetic changes in last few years instead of focusing on improving core technology.

jitl4• 10 months ago

Many vendors look at the userAgent. I’d be surprised if Microsoft Teams org doesn't have some soft incentives pushing Edge and if not edge Chromium-based browsers.

Then again, there are definitely some Firefox behaviors that differ from the WebKit-derived engines (webkit, blink, etc); for a few years Notion editor had very different UX in Firefox for this reason. They eventually fixed it though! Firefox's profiler is also excellent, I always analyze my Chrome profiles in https://profiler.firefox.com/ when I'm optimizing CPU use.

zamadatix4• 10 months ago

majority of enterprise software now (including and starting with Microsoft teams) outright say do not support firefox

Teams has explicitly supported Firefox for a while now https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/teams-clien... but the problem is "there's always another site that doesn't work right". Firefox usage share got too low, so places just check Chrom* and Safari work with the new feature and ship (sometimes not even the latter, if they don't care about mobile as much).

yeasku• 10 months ago

I work every day with Firefox and the only problem I have is with Citrix.

Citrix has always been shit, so is not surprising.

derefr• 10 months ago

Feels like we need something like early versions of Edge, where it was using Chromium but could be told to open individual tabs (or configured to always open links to certain origins) in an IE webview.

Except, instead of Chromium, Firefox, and instead of IE, Chromium.

hooverd• 10 months ago

Firefox has been so far so good for me, in terms of support.

chneu2• 10 months ago

spoof the user agent. it'll probably work just fine.

cranberryturkey2• 10 months ago

Does it support PWAs?

jitl4• 10 months ago

From the website

Install any web apps and use them as standalone desktop apps without duplicating Chromium.

cranberryturkey2• 10 months ago

Thanks

piskov• 10 months ago

There are currently 2 of us

Nope. No. Thank you.

Props for featuring Kagi though.

denkmoon• 10 months ago

Wow another chromium skin, how exciting.

lunarcave• 10 months ago

In the "choose a default search engine" page, it has a slightly amusing summary for each.

Google
Your personal data fuels its monopoly. Market-dominant due to anti-competitive and anti-consumer practices.
Qwant
Based in Europe. Uses Bing results. Sends tracking data to Microsoft.
DuckDuckGo
Privacy-focused. Relies on Bing results but never tracks or profiles you.
Ecosia
May plant trees for clicking ads. Relies on Bing and Google. Sends tracking data to Microsoft and Google.
Microsoft Bing
Collects extensive personal data. Privacy controls are buried and limited. Subjectively overwhelming UI.
Kagi
Privacy-focused. Customizable results without ads or tracking. Requires a paid account.

firejake308• 10 months ago

Slightly amusing, perhaps, but accurate and concise? Definitely.

hopelite• 10 months ago

I wish we could just add our own default search with a search string template like when the Internet was still alive.

That being said, I like using the slightly more obscure presearch.com and Swisscows.com, for what it’s worth.

hdjrudni2• 10 months ago

I wish we could just add our own default search with a search string template like when the Internet was still alive.

Can't we? The %s thing works in Vivaldi. Worked in Chrome last time I checked.

lpln34522• 10 months ago

Firefox still lets you do this.

You can add any URL as a custom search engine by providing a string template for the query.

It doesn't have to be a formal "search provider". Any URL that accepts a query string will work.

int_19h3• 10 months ago

The only major browser that I can think of that doesn't support custom search URLs, including making one the default, is Safari.

keyle• 10 months ago

Imagine reading that list in 1995. Sigh.

godelski10• 10 months ago

The irony is it is a Chromium browser...

nunobrito• 10 months ago

Please review your opinion about Qwant, the overwhelming majority of search results are produced internally and they are very clear about what isn't: https://betterweb.qwant.com/en/2023/09/18/web-indexing-where...

In Europe they are still IMHO the best option for an independent search engine.

TiredOfLife3• 10 months ago

Kagi

should be changed to

Openly and proudly collaborates with russian government

n4bz0r3• 10 months ago

What's the context? Is there a proof of sorts?

klibertp• 10 months ago

Kagi uses Yandex to improve search results for relevant queries. That's all they do.

As a company providing the service of web search, Kagi should do whatever it takes to improve search results. I imagine Yandex is the biggest and most complete index of Russian-language content - not using it would make the search results worse. The fact that Kagi still cross-references other indexes and allows users to downgrade specific results provides a check on propaganda content.

It's OK to have an opinion, and it's OK to dislike Kagi because it doesn't have the same opinion. It's wrong to mischaracterize what Kagi does, using wording that strongly suggests actions way more nefarious than giving a few dollars to a Russian company in exchange for some (anonymized) API calls.

xnx• 10 months ago

Make an Android version that supports extensions (preferably MV2) like the now abandoned Kiwi Browser did and I'll be very interested.

superasn• 10 months ago

Yes I'd be interested too. I'm still using Kiwi browser but afraid it will stop working anytime soon.

I did recently see this browser is unsafe when trying to open Gmail in it, so any chromium based update to date alternative there would be amazing!

efreak5• 10 months ago

I still (unfortunately) am stuck with kiwi as well. I use it almost exclusively for a few webapps that use large amounts of indexeddb storage (>10gb) without a working export method[1]. With Firefox, I was able to export this data with devtools over ADB[2] to another Firefox install.

I really wish someone would create an indexeddb shim that interfaces with another system and only uses indexeddb for (very large) cache. Something I could drop in with a userscript would be lovely, even if it required running a local server with something like rsync or rclone responsible for the actual transfers.

[1]: dexie import export used to work, now it never returns. I have no way of verifying that it's doing nothing without putting it in background (thus suspending it...), but I've let it run 3 hours with no results. [2]: Firefox doesn't allow backing up app data for some reason but devtools functions allow reading and writing the profile directory through the use of terminal commands (zip profile directory, unzip and restart browser).

gosub100• 10 months ago

What is the primary difficulty in developing a web browser?

- breadth of the http/css/js standard? - inefficient implementations - requires too many resources?

Why has the market converged on two major players and most independent attempts fall short?

zamadatix4• 10 months ago

They're 30+ million lines of code to cover the feature set, but monetization is tough and security/feature churn is constant. It's also nearly meaningless to start small - either you build everything or you don't.

This is just Chromium with some patches though, the problem with these kinds of things is it's small groups that tend to lose interest.

jitl4• 10 months ago

This is neat, and reminds me of Kagi's browser Orion, since their hero image features Kagi search.

Orion is WebKit based, so it uses less battery and feels faster to me compared to Chromium browsers, yet it largely supports Chrome extensions via a compatibility layer; like Helium uBlock Origin is included by default. It also has vertical tabs which is essential for me, and open-url routing between profiles.

However, I tried it in January 2025 and gave up on using it after a few weeks of sporadic bugs. I didn't lose data or anything but some actions in the UI didn't produce any result, or they produced a confusing unintended result. I hope they get better - I will probably give it another go in a few months, especially since Arc (my current browser) is now owned by Atlassian.

https://kagi.com/orion/

Anyways, great to see a Chromium browser improving on the privacy of ungoogled-chromium.

GuinansEyebrows2• 10 months ago

Might’ve worth giving it another shot. It’s still somewhat buggy but usually just with UI things. I haven’t had a lot of actual functionality issues in the last couple months of use on iOS or macOS.

esafak3• 10 months ago

If they open sourced it maybe they could get those pesky bugs fixed...

setsewerd2• 10 months ago

I love Kagi as a search engine but the Orion UI feels too similar to Safari to really enjoy it as much.

I do enjoy vertical tabs, faster browsing, better privacy obviously. But "largely" is doing some heavy lifting in your mention of chrome extension support. I use about a dozen chrome extensions typically and about 4 of them are supported by Orion last I checked. Although of course #12 in Chrome is the Kagi search extension itself :)

The bookmarks bar seems consistently wonky though, with bookmarks showing the wrong logos (like Google Sheets showing up with the Google Docs logo, or ChatGPT showing some weirdly cropped version of itself), inability to rearrange bookmarks in a folder without opening the dedicated bookmark manager page.

If some basic usability things like this were fixed, along with adding tab groups (also big for me when I have 50 tabs open), I'd probably give it another go. Kagi search engine has largely replaced google search already for me so I'll definitely give it another go once these things are updated.

dani_kagi2• 10 months ago

Thanks for the feedback, I definitely see some wonkiness with the bookmarks bar and forwarded them to the team to investigate.

sbinnee• 10 months ago

Tried Orion on mac for a week or two. I also had a few bugs when using google docs and sheets. I gave up because I couldn’t work. However I keep using the iOS app. It’s quite good although I need to restart the app from time to time because of some bugs.

rkomorn9• 10 months ago

Upvoted because this is very relevant to my prospective usage of any alternative browser.

crossroadsguy2• 10 months ago

Orion was a very unstable/buggy app. I don't know how it is now. The funny thing is when I had reached out to their support with a detailed bug report, they asked me to go to GitHub issues instead (or their feedback forum; not sure whether they had moved). I asked them to pass it to the team since I had already shared it and these were easily and always reproducible; I had added proper steps as well. They said - nope. At that point, I realised what a mistake it had been trying to "contribute" to yet another closed-source software. Mail thread deleted, browsers - both iOS/mac - uninstalled. End of story.

dani_kagi2• 10 months ago

I'm sorry you had this experience. If you still have the bug report please send it to daniel.langh at kagi.com. I'll check on your original report and see how we can improve our communication going forward.

pparanoidd• 10 months ago

Would use it 100% if it was open source, such a solvable dealbreaker.

Zen browser is eating their lunch at the moment.

DavideNL2• 10 months ago

Note that Zen Browser is (yet another) Firefox fork. Might as well just use Firefox, with better settings (like Arkenfox user.js, customized how you like it). Would be better security & privacy wise.

Orion is a WebKit based browser (like Safari).

DavideNL2• 10 months ago

The biggest problem with Orion is the Firefox & Chrome extensions; Many don't work properly, but you don't see any errors, so you have no idea what parts are working and aren't.

Like using a content blocker and "hoping for the best". It might work, or not.

That's one of the reasons i stopped using Orion...

nice_byte• 10 months ago

another chromium fork?

nextworddev3• 10 months ago

It’s the new vscode fork

slimebot803• 10 months ago

You have my attention!

But in this day and age, I need to understand more about intentions, and what sustains projects like this.

For the moment I've settled on Safari simply because Apple makes its billions elsewhere, even if I am increasingly disappointed with how they are playing along with politics right now.

WorldPeas• 10 months ago

I just wish there were a browser that would use their webview technology with better tabbing, video playback, etc. Apple is often minimal to a fault.

promiseofbeans• 10 months ago

Kagi’s Orion browser tries to do this, and it works great for me on iOS (though I still use Firefox on my mac)

https://kagi.com/orion/

drnick12• 10 months ago

What makes you think that Apple respects your privacy any more than Google and Microsoft? The marketing brochure?

ed_mercer• 10 months ago

Apple has released several privacy features, their slogan is “Privacy. That’s Apple.”, and they make their money from hardware. Even if not a perfect company it’s sure as hell a better bet than MS or google.

slimebot803• 10 months ago

Can gauge it for myself. You do you.

I certainly will not be equating Apple to Google or Microsoft.

For now.

UberFly• 10 months ago

Right now? All major corporations play along with whatever the current political winds are. Your own personal biases don't matter in their decision making.

slimebot803• 10 months ago

Sure. But I am allowed to compare now to yesteryear, and on my own scale the differences are humungous.

lxe• 10 months ago

Bangs, or as I like to call them AOL Keywords.

poopsmithe• 10 months ago

One criticism with your website: It incorrectly assumes I'm not on desktop and hides the download button from me.

GodelNumbering• 10 months ago

I have felt like a perennial browser refugee for a while. For about 20 years now (since OG Firefox was at peak and Chrome was not yet launched), every new browser promises the same things, gets popular enough, then does a full or partial 180.

While I like the pitch of this browser, I find it a little difficult to take it at the face value, especially given there is no info on the founders, or whether it is run as a company or a non-profit etc.

Perhaps someone in this thread could answer: which company/org structure provides best guarantees against gradual, slow, multi-year rot that seems to take over everything?

I would happily pay a small monthly subscription fee for a browser if it has strong legally protected privacy guarantees.

ashikns• 10 months ago

I feel the same. For now, I've made peace with having to switch to "whatever is the latest maintained fork with privacy defaults" every 6 months. Hopefully Ladybird becomes a usable browser sometime soon.

satyapr93• 10 months ago

You can look into Ulaa browser by Zoho. It fits your description.

hoistbypetard2• 10 months ago

That's wild. I've been a Zoho customer for some time, and I've never heard anything about that.

cookiengineer• 10 months ago

In my opinion that's Ladybird at the moment.

It's hard to predict what future generations of developers are doing, but right now Ladybird seems to have the right values embedded into their nonprofit structure.

All the other browser projects have to be enshittified eventually, and therefore have to fulfill other interests than their users' interests to get there.

neya• 10 months ago

For what it's worth, I like Orion - built by the same team that built the Kagi search engine. It's a shit browser for developers (inspect panel crashes half the time and other bugs), but I trust it way more than Chrome or even Safari. For development tasks - if I need to, I simply switch to Firefox.

novok• 10 months ago

The hard answer is the project cannot attract the good engineers anymore because it eventually stops being a growth project. Without being a growth project, you don't get investment into what you want to do anymore and there is less potential growth in your career and income.

Mattified• 10 months ago

which company/org structure provides best guarantees against gradual, slow, multi-year rot that seems to take over everything?

I don't think any such guarantees exist, unfortunately.

WadeGrimridge• 10 months ago

it’s made by the same person who made cobalt.tools

bodge50002• 10 months ago

That makes it a lot more credible in my books, still not sure about a chromium browser but it takes it from a hard to a soft pass

extraduder_ire4• 10 months ago

This makes !cobalt appearing as an example on the /bangs page make more sense.

lionkor• 10 months ago

which company/org structure provides best guarantees against gradual, slow, multi-year rot that seems to take over everything?

German e.V. [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Registered_association_(German...

EasyMark4• 10 months ago

Browsers are always going to be "as-is, best effort" . No one, not even google is going to stick out their neck and protect your privacy, that's up to you, and especially not "legally" as that has aspects of easily being sued when privacy/money is involved. Certainly not for a "small monthly fee". Best you're going to get is open source and security community scrutiny of said open source code

nd4spdviper• 10 months ago

I think I'll just wait for Ladybird, in the meantime keep using Safari and Firefox as always.

h4ch12• 10 months ago

Is there a reason for not having Issues on their main repo? Especially since they're in a beta stage; they don't have to fix/acknowledge all issues, but as an end-user they're pretty useful for debugging, seeing actual human feedback.

devmor• 10 months ago

I really have no interest in using a Chromium/Blink browser at this point, that's the real kicker for me.

I would prefer to use and support browsers using alternate rendering engines and without any ties back to Google, even if it means I personally get a lesser experience, because I don't trust Google and I want to ensure they don't entirely control the direction of the browsable internet.

lpln34522• 10 months ago

So another Chromium based browser featuring the usual 'Privacy' and a collection of miscellaneous features. Maybe 'AI' will be added. None of this appears to go beyond what some browser extension could do. Personally I'm not seeing the appeal.

As a side note, the very similar Arc browser was just sold off to Atlassian for a quick exit.

ulrikrasmussen2• 10 months ago

Can someone explain to me why most browser forks are based on Chromium? If the goal is to make a privacy focused browser which is independent of Google, isn't it then a bit counterproductive to put all your eggs in a basket which only exists due to the goodwill of your main competitor? Why not webkit or Gecko? There might be a good argument for it, but as a person concerned with privacy and the future freedom of the internet, who is supposedly the target user for a browser like this, I would expect the justification to depend on Google code to be front and center on the page.

muglug• 10 months ago

Even in 2025 you still get the most compatibility with [insert-website-here] with Chromium

digitalPhonix• 10 months ago

Sure but I only use Firefox (no other browser installed (except Edge on Windows)) and I don’t have any issues; so some none-trivial portion of the web doesn’t require Chrom(ium) specific behaviour.

cortesoft• 10 months ago

Its probably the easiest to build off of.

adrr3• 10 months ago

Couple main reasons: 1) BSD license vs a CopyLeft license. Edge, Opera etc don't want to push their changes back up. 2) Compatibility and performance is why Brave switched from Gecko to Chromium. 75% of the marketshare is chromium based browsers so sites will more than likely work with chromium browsers.

I don't why webkit is more popular. Maybe because it(Apple) is slow to adopt standards.

swiftcoder6• 10 months ago

Maybe because it(Apple) is slow to adopt standards

I think this is an interesting bit of propaganda - they are historically not all that slow to adopt actual standards.

What they often are is unwilling to adopt Google's pre-standardisation extensions (things like WebUSB, which have never been adopted as standards).

jnrk• 10 months ago

I don't why webkit is more popular.

Because Safari comes pre-installed on billions of devices?

zarzavat• 10 months ago

WebKit is easy but has terrible compatibility because the fruit company makes money from native apps. They do the bare minimum to keep Safari functional so that people keep buying iPhones.

Gecko has an uncertain future and is perpetually at risk of dying.

It's at least possible to switch from Chromium to WebKit if necessary so the risks of building off of Chromium are not that big.

hnlmorg2• 10 months ago

Gecko is too big to die. Even with Firefox’s market share being a shadow of its former self, it’s still used by millions.

The real problems with Gecko is just that it’s harder to fork and has less compatibility with the web (that last part is largely just due to Chromium being the de facto standard so fewer people test their sites against Firefox).

pjmlp9• 10 months ago

Rather the fruit company doesn't want to implement ChromeOS Platform APIs that never made it into Web standards.

rs_rs_rs_rs_rs• 10 months ago

Can someone explain to me why most browser forks are based on Chromium?

Because it's very very very good. Google poored billions into it and it shows.

ulrikrasmussen2• 10 months ago

Everyone mentions compatibility and performance as the main reasons, but this still doesn't make any sense to me. If I switch to a browser which has a stated goal of protecting my privacy and protecting the freedom of the web, then performance and web site compatibility is much further down my list of priorities.

rkomorn9• 10 months ago

I'd agree but performance and compatibility bubbles up to top concern pretty quickly when you use something nearly constantly (which I'd say is applicable for a browser).

cyborgrising• 10 months ago

Even if you have personal priorities for privacy, surely you can understand that many user's first expectation for a web browser is for websites to work correctly.

We've kind of lost the plot if we get too far away from the core notion that a web browser is for correctly and completely rendering websites. The user population don't use web browsers to hide, they use it to look at the internet and do internet work. If a browser has any problems doing this, it not going to be relevant.

mrweasel• 10 months ago

I believe that Gecko is notoriously hard to maintain and integrate into other software. It's not something I've attempted myself so take it for what it is. It was one of the issues Servo was suppose to address.

There is a few browsers based on WebKit, so that seems doable.

bodge50002• 10 months ago

My guess is just that a lot of people really like Chrome and wish they could have that without the privacy concerns. I mean honestly I'm the same, I'm just seemingly more cynical as to whether that's possible.

That plus the fact that using a chrome based browser effectively hands over a bit more control of the web to chrome. If I don't like the privacy issues with chrome, it seems like a bad idea to hand (more) control of web standards over to the company that makes it, directly or indirectly.

gwbas1c5• 10 months ago

I don't know the internal details of the architecture, but on Windows, it's very trivial to be "Chromium". The newest web browser component has been based on Chromium for a few years.

penchant2• 10 months ago

The thing is, Gecko is really insecure when compared to Chromium. Its sandboxing is asinine. Additionally, due to lack of WebView implementation, on mobile you have to use Chromium either way, leaving you with two completely separate attack surfaces.

Quoting GrapheneOS developers[1]:

Avoid Gecko-based browsers like Firefox as they're currently much more vulnerable to exploitation and inherently add a huge amount of attack surface. Gecko doesn't have a WebView implementation (GeckoView is not a WebView implementation), so it has to be used alongside the Chromium-based WebView rather than instead of Chromium, which means having the remote attack surface of two separate browser engines instead of only one. Firefox / Gecko also bypass or cripple a fair bit of the upstream and GrapheneOS hardening work for apps. Worst of all, Firefox does not have internal sandboxing on Android. This is despite the fact that Chromium semantic sandbox layer on Android is implemented via the OS isolatedProcess feature, which is a very easy to use boolean property for app service processes to provide strong isolation with only the ability to communicate with the app running them via the standard service API. Even in the desktop version, Firefox's sandbox is still substantially weaker (especially on Linux) and lacks full support for isolating sites from each other rather than only containing content as a whole. The sandbox has been gradually improving on the desktop but it isn't happening for their Android browser yet.

IronFox (an FF fork) developers[2]:

While we do as much as possible to improve the situation, it should be noted that Firefox-based web browsers, including IronFox, have security deficiencies when compared to Chromium. This is especially notable on Android.

[1] https://grapheneos.org/usage#web-browsing

[2] https://gitlab.com/ironfox-oss/IronFox/-/blob/dev/docs/Limit...

An in-depth examination of this topic and a plethora of other sources can also be found here: https://madaidans-insecurities.github.io/firefox-chromium.ht...

kogasa240p• 10 months ago

Another chromium fork, no thanks.

sidcool• 10 months ago

Call me sceptic but not falling for it again. I have been hurt too many times.

mixtureoftakes2• 10 months ago

so you have ptsd from a browser?

imcritic2• 10 months ago

Aren't we all?

godelski10• 10 months ago

  > Helium is based on Chromium
  > Best privacy by default

Sorry, pass...

Even with un-googled Chromium I do not think these statements are self-consistent. We need browsers that do not allow Google to control the ecosystem. We need legitimate competition. So what, our choices are Firefox (Gecko), Safari (WebKit), and Ladybird?

Personally I go with Firefox on most devices and Orion (WebKit) on my iPhone and iPad.

  > Helium anonymizes all internal requests to the Chrome Web Store via Helium services.

This seems like something pretty easy to mess up. Maybe it is good now, but it sure is going to be a cat and mouse game.

I really would be curious to have some breakdown comparison with something like the Mullvad browser (Gecko). I have a lot of trust for both the Mullvad and Tor teams. They have a much longer history working with this kind of stuff and have been consistently updating it since release. Launched in early 2023[0] and last update was last week[1].

[0] The Mullvad Browser (mullvad.net) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35421034

[0.5] Mullvad Browser (torproject.org) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37159744

[1] https://github.com/mullvad/mullvad-browser

vasco• 10 months ago

How is firefox legitimate competition when they are basically financed by Google?

scbzzzzz• 10 months ago

You need to look at history. In early 90s why did Microsoft invest in apple when it is its competitors. Investment doesn't mean they are medling into mozilla business. For companies like google (present) or Microsoft in 90's. It is better to have a crippled competitor than no competitor. No competitor attracts government agencies for monopoly which is worse.

tclover• 10 months ago

Mozilla is fine taking money from Google, because it keeps "competition" alive otherwise Google would face antitrust lawsuits for running a monopoly.

FlyingSnake• 10 months ago

Because it's the only other browser engine that's currently available in the market.

rkomorn9• 10 months ago

Maybe it's also the other way around: if Firefox was legitimate competition, Google wouldn't "fund" them (quotes because really, google is also just buying user traffic with their investment).

Is Google actively sabotaging Mozilla or is Mozilla a genuine competitor that just hasn't figured out how to build a browser that'll actually challenge Chrome (and Chromiumy browsers) beyond ideologist users?

I say it's the latter. Google's money doesn't actually negatively impact Firefox's competitiveness.

godelski10• 10 months ago

Allow me to rephrase my earlier choice

  Chromium: Entirely dependent on Google, a $3T company who's entire business model relies upon invading your privacy and currently has a >70% global share of browsers
  WebKit: A closed source browser with ~18% of browser share and run by a nearly $4T company who forces all browsers on their mobile devices to be reskinned versions of their browser and probably wants to do the same on their other devices
  Gecko: An open source browser with ~4% of the browser share, run by a non-profit with a mission of to preserve privacy but is struggling to find funding.

All three choices suck. I don't think anyone is disagreeing with that. But there's only one option on here that isn't trying to royally fuck everyone over and actually cares about the very service we're arguing over.

So what... we're going to let the internet get screwed because a bunch of dudes making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year can't toss some beer money over to the little guy?

You paint this as a hopeless picture, but seriously, have you considered donating? Every time I see these types of threads I see comments like

  > I would happily pay a small monthly subscription fee for a browser if it has strong legally protected privacy guarantees.[0]

Seriously, are we all that greedy and myopic? They're a non-profit. You know tons of companies, such as Google and every other big tech company, have some donation matching system. Google pays the Mozilla Foundation about half a billion a year to make Google the default search engine. How is the fact that they are throwing such massive amounts of money not a concerning thing? Yet FF has enough users that we could give them an extra 40% revenue if we tossed them $5 PER YEAR. That's it.

Do you really think your browser provides to you less value than your Netflix (160%/360%/500% more expensive) or Spotify (240% more expensive) account? Seriously? If literally 30% of FF users gave to Mozilla what they are willing to give to Spotify, then the problem is solved. Or 15% of users did it through their company's matching program. If instead of discouraging people, you got more people to convert then the percentage of necessary contributors decreases!

It's even tax fucking deductible so it isn't even that <$5/yr...

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45369141

chneu2• 10 months ago

Security isn't just about your data. It's about the security of an open web. Having one rendering engine that controls everything is not secure.

photomatt• 10 months ago

It's actually the beauty of open source that we can align on a few primitives that are reusable in several different contexts to build radically different product experiences and world views. If you think of the phylogenetic tree of software this is exactly what you want to happen.

xpe2• 10 months ago

“Resilience” conveys your meaning better than “security”, and it calls to mind more relevant interventions.

norskeld• 10 months ago

While I agree that monopolies suck, I _absolutely hate_ having to waste my time adjusting styles and writing workaround code just to make everything look and work consistently in a multitude of browsers. This is one of the reasons — among a hundred others — that I grew to somewhat hate front-end, doubly so with the rise of mobile devices. And the more rendering engines we have, the more developers will have to fight frustrating battles with inconsistencies and quirks.

JoshTriplett• 10 months ago

So what, our choices are Firefox (Gecko),

Don't forget Servo. People are actively working on it, and it could use more help.

indy• 10 months ago

Hopefully the Ladybird browser will become a viable choice soon

cropcirclbureau• 10 months ago

It's not just anyone, it's the folks at Igalia. I think people disregard Servo since it's no longer under Mozilla but Igalia aren't just random contributors picking up the slack, they're browser experts that also work on Chromium.

esad• 10 months ago

Maybe it's just me, but from time to time I try latest Servo build and it never survives more than few minutes of usage before crashing. Last time I did it was 3 days ago, I opened a website and it crashed with "RefCell already borrowed" in what seems to be a logger module. This always strikes me as weird because one of the selling points for Rust is memory and thread safety (quote from the website: "eliminate many classes of bugs at compile-time").

that_guy_iain2• 10 months ago

Even with un-googled Chromium I do not think these statements are self-consistent. We need browsers that do not allow Google to control the ecosystem. We need legitimate competition.

If you fork Chromium, Google doesn't control the ecosystem, it controls a large part of it. But you're able to build on top of that ecosystem. So you can have the best of both worlds, all the extensions and ecosystem from Chrome but with more. That is called true competition.

I also suspect Brave would take offense to your claim you can't have privacy on a Chromium fork.

acka• 10 months ago

While I appreciate your perspective, the widespread adoption of Google Chrome has presented challenges. The implementation of Manifest V3 demonstrates Google's significant influence over extension developers, requiring adherence to increasingly restrictive APIs or facing limited visibility within less popular browsers.

pjmlp9• 10 months ago

Yeah, everyone is doing their little contribution to help Google take over the Web and turn it into ChromeOS Platform.

Why did we ever bothered with the IE lawsuit, for a newer generation to give the Web on a plate to Google?

rjh293• 10 months ago

Because at the time IE6 was a terrible browser with poor standards support, while Chrome is an excellent browser with leading standards support. It is a gilded cage.

vovavili4• 10 months ago

The last thing Google would want is the web to turn into a Chrome platform. Unlike with Microsoft or even Apple, their source of revenue is web, and they they are doing everything in their capacity for this platform to win. This is exactly why they open-sourced most of Chrome and almost fully finance Chrome's biggest competitor.

RoryH• 10 months ago

It was also a time before Google demoted "Don't be evil." from their company literature.

dotancohen5• 10 months ago

  > Why did we ever bothered with the IE lawsuit, for a newer generation to give the Web on a plate to Google?

Without proper education, every generation repeats the follies of their parents.

EchoReflection• 10 months ago

the (very challenging) "trick" is to use Libre hardware/software, like Pinephone and LineageOS, but that's not realistic for the vast majority of people :(

NaomiLehman• 10 months ago

For me, the fact that a browser is based on Chromium is a deal breaker when compared to CPU/RAM usage of Safari on Mac OS. When I open the some JS heavy tabs like Notion, AIstudio.google.com, email, the difference is huge.

Orion is the only alternative, because as you said, it's built on WebKit, but I had trouble it working with extensions that I need for my work.

BatteryMountain• 10 months ago

Literally the first thing I looked for...(if it is based on chromium).

When can we get a new kind of browser that doesn't use html/css/js...? Build one from scratch with a common design language (but modifiable by the user)

typpilol4• 10 months ago

That would be a monumental task probably requiring tens of millions to be honest

PUSH_AX• 10 months ago

This is a gargantuan task, I can’t even articulate how much work this would be.

ranguna2• 10 months ago

So you mean a browser that can't load any existing pages?

hoistbypetard2• 10 months ago

1991? (gopher)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gopher_(protocol)

2019? (gemini)

https://geminiprotocol.net

user39393824• 10 months ago

The answer is to get rid of the web, JS, and HTTP. I’m working on it.

0xEF• 10 months ago

Okay, what's the plan?

anon1395• 10 months ago

Safari should be on Windows. I don't care what CSS standards it has, it needs to give Chrome and Firefox some competition

pmontra• 10 months ago

It used to be there, 2007-2012 https://archive.org/details/safari-5.1.7-windows

I found an announcement in Italian on Apple website. It's from June 2007 https://www.apple.com/it/newsroom/2007/06/11Apple-Introduces...

The original plan with the iPhone was to have web apps, not native apps. That's why they needed to run the rendering engine of the iPhone on Windows. Then they went native and Mac only with the dev environment.

I don't think that Apple would earn one single dollar by porting Safari to Windows again.

NoGravitas• 10 months ago

You used to be able to get Epiphany preview on Windows, for quite a long time after you could get Safari on Windows. Doesn't seem to be the case anymore, though.

password4321• 10 months ago

Here are the Windows WebKit builds: https://build.webkit.org/#/builders/1192

"MiniBrowser" opened after installing AppleMobileDeviceSupport64 from iTunes and VC_redist.x64, and it appeared to be making network requests, but it never rendered any web content I could see.

saubeidl• 10 months ago

Zen is quite nice if you like something based on Firefox, but with a stronger UX focus!

SuperHeavy256• 10 months ago

A browser being based on Chromium has nothing to do with how private it is. Yes you are furthering an internet monopoly by using chromium. But there is noncorrelation between being based of Chromium and Privacy.

yupyupyups3• 10 months ago

Yes it has, unless they plan to do significant changes to how the relevant JS APIs function, which is usually prohibitively expensive to maintain. Standard Chromium allows websites to fetch a lot of fingerprintable bits, this is even true for Brave. Tracking protection on Chromium is a joke.

Firefox on the other hand is better in this respect and even has a setting explicitly for resisting fingerprinting.

vogu66• 10 months ago

There's Palemoon's Goanna, also

efreak5• 10 months ago

Isn't Goanna unmaintainable and full of potential vulnerabilities?

ttoinou• 10 months ago

I love Chromium ! It's the fastest browser implementation out there, and the best to handle hundreds of tabs in the background. What if, everyone was going on a fork of ungoogled chromium, there would be interest into alternative browsers to Chrome and money invested there, and at some point making forks of Chromium separated from Google might make sense business wise. So, we can impact the future of browsers by using chromium based browsers

ho_schi• 10 months ago

Epiphany (WebKitGtk) on Linux, native Gtk-UI :)

I'm posting right now with it here.

gregorvand• 10 months ago

Pass, sure, but vs what currently?

Helium does not have to be the destination. But it is a good step when Chromium is the standard (try using Safari and quickly websites seem uncharacteristically janky)

uyzstvqs2• 10 months ago

Yet I pick a Chromium based browser because Firefox is awfully anti-user. I still can't load extensions that are not Mozilla-approved, a major deal breaker for me. Then there's the "news" (ragebait slop) on the new tab screen by default, almost like I'm using MS Edge, and also the many sponsored & "suggested" (read: sponsored) links by default in new tab and the address bar as well.

The only acceptable Gecko-based browser I know of right now is Zen, which is great but still in beta. And Tor & Mullvad Browser are good for private one-time sessions.

We need competition for a free and open internet, I fully agree. Mozilla is far from a decent champion for that cause. I'm far more excited at what Ladybird has to offer.

prettymuchnoone• 10 months ago

by "Mozilla approved" do you mean that it has to come from the official add-on store?

because in my experience, it doesn't--I've installed a couple of extensions manually by just dragging the .xpi into the window.

RamRodification• 10 months ago

Sponsor stuff that you can just turn off (Firefox) vs. Selling out your privacy directly (chromium with worse fingerprinting protection) and indirectly (Google browser monopoly).

lloydatkinson• 10 months ago

Reminds me of DuckDuckGo's "privacy" browser that is again just a Chrome/WebView wrapper.

alex1138• 10 months ago

Also it's worth mentioning that GNU does have their own flavor of Firefox, if that's your cup of tea

deskamess• 10 months ago

I use FF... but they are financially tied to Google and even technically they are waiting on Google to implement JPEG-XL instead of moving forward themselves. Why not do some work/spend some money to borrow Safari's implementation or audit and augment a third party library? Instead of waiting on Google... esp on this matter where you could be waiting for a long time.

yreg2• 10 months ago

Naive question — why is everyone building chromium-based browsers as opposed to using Gecko? Is it difficult to integrate?

jmm5• 10 months ago

Most of these chromium-based browsers are intended to address privacy concerns. Firefox (mostly) respects your privacy.

There are also sometimes compatibility issues with Firefox because web developers only test on chromium and webkit. Anyone opinionated enough to put up with that is just going to use Firefox.

mosburger• 10 months ago

That's my (admittedly extremely limited) understanding. The Mozilla/Firefox people de-prioritized making Gecko a separate linkable library years ago, and it's no longer a straightforward thing to do. Which is a real bummer.

kwanbix• 10 months ago

There are many Gecko browsers. Floorp, Waterfox are running on my machine for example.

EasyMark4• 10 months ago

I like zen for this, if you like a pretty, no-nonsense browser. If you like a few more features and a web panel and some GUI tweakery floorp is good.

ikari_pl• 10 months ago

I came here to leave this comment exactly. I stopped reading the page after "based on Chromium".

Thank you.

lynndotpy7• 10 months ago

I agree with you here. I want a viable non-Chromium browser.

But even if that existed, I also think a practical Chromium browser is important to have access to. I'm a developer and I use the web, so sometimes I just need Chromium. I think that will continue to be necessary for at least 10 years.

And I think the landscape of Chromium browsers is very bad. As a minimum, I want adblocking, low- or no-telemetry, timely security updates, no forced arbitration clause in its ToS, and support across platforms.

Right now, I think that makes Brave the best Chromium browser. That is not an accolade, I deeply dislike Brave, for dozens of reasons. It's just the best of a bad bunch. (But credit where it's due, I do very much like its "Shields" control.)

I only learned about Helium from this thread, but it checks almost all of my boxes. I was really excited to see a new browser that hits my checkboxes... But it's MacOS only :( Alas

hedora2• 10 months ago

What is your definition of “viable”? Plenty of people own iPhones, which is locked down to webkit.

Similarly, firefox is fine. I switch between it chromium and safari for dev work, and (unless you go out of your way to find a counterexample) they’re completely interchangeable in terms of compatibility and real-world performance.

Firefox runs fine on android, so there’s not even a platform where chrome is the only choice (other than chromebooks).

lelanthran7• 10 months ago

I agree with you here. I want a viable non-Chromium browser.

It doesn't look like you do.

Firefox has worked for me across 7 different employers in the last 15 years with no problems, and yet you haven't switched to it.

Actions speak louder than words. There is a viable alternative. You aren't using it.

falleng0d• 10 months ago

its not MacOS only. just installed on windows

butlike2• 10 months ago

I like Arc browser by The Browser Company. As far as I understand it, it's made by a bunch of jaded ex-google employees, so the Google stuff is also stripped-out. The features are next level, and I feel it's a very forward-thinking browser. Maybe it will work for you

0_gravitas• 10 months ago

Orion as well (by the Kagi people), not available on linux yet but there is a roadmap: web-kit based.

hedora2• 10 months ago

I wish they’d open source their work.

(Sent from orion on ios, with firefox’s ublock origin, etc enabled)

honeybadger1• 10 months ago

I liked it when I used macOS but now I work primarily in a windows/fedora environment.

guywithahat• 10 months ago

You say this like chromium is not the best browser experience we have. There used to be a point where everyone had to build websites for 5 different web engines, each of which had their own quirks. Now that we just build for one it's so much easier, and while chromium still does a great job I'm not sure why we'd want to create another, likely worse, engine and browser.

FuriouslyAdrift• 10 months ago

Palemoon still exists... https://www.palemoon.org/

andai2• 10 months ago

Firefox gets most of its funding from Google. They are Google's antitrust lawsuit insurance.

Which is unfortunate, or fortunate, depending on how you look at the situation.

6c696e7578• 10 months ago

They do, whilst they have a minor user base. If they become the majority they'll lose funding.

So from Mozilla's point of view, they must be continually worse alternative. They'd shoot themselves in the foot if they looked like the better alternative.

blicsd• 10 months ago

holy soy

penchant2• 10 months ago

Quoting GrapheneOS developers[1]:

Avoid Gecko-based browsers like Firefox as they're currently much more vulnerable to exploitation and inherently add a huge amount of attack surface. Gecko doesn't have a WebView implementation (GeckoView is not a WebView implementation), so it has to be used alongside the Chromium-based WebView rather than instead of Chromium, which means having the remote attack surface of two separate browser engines instead of only one. Firefox / Gecko also bypass or cripple a fair bit of the upstream and GrapheneOS hardening work for apps. Worst of all, Firefox does not have internal sandboxing on Android. This is despite the fact that Chromium semantic sandbox layer on Android is implemented via the OS isolatedProcess feature, which is a very easy to use boolean property for app service processes to provide strong isolation with only the ability to communicate with the app running them via the standard service API. Even in the desktop version, Firefox's sandbox is still substantially weaker (especially on Linux) and lacks full support for isolating sites from each other rather than only containing content as a whole. The sandbox has been gradually improving on the desktop but it isn't happening for their Android browser yet.

IronFox (an FF fork) developers[2]:

While we do as much as possible to improve the situation, it should be noted that Firefox-based web browsers, including IronFox, have security deficiencies when compared to Chromium. This is especially notable on Android.

[1] https://grapheneos.org/usage#web-browsing

[2] https://gitlab.com/ironfox-oss/IronFox/-/blob/dev/docs/Limit...

An in-depth examination of this topic and a plethora of other sources can also be found here: https://madaidans-insecurities.github.io/firefox-chromium.ht...

mikae1• 10 months ago

It comes packaged with uBlock Origin. Is it the mv2 version or Origin Lite?

gabrielhfrn• 10 months ago

I learned about this project from Theo (T3 guy), and his approval of it, make of that what you will.

Not 100% related but I found it funny that on that specific video, in which he spends the best part of 40 minutes talking about how the only browsers that are worth talking about are ones which "improve" your browsing experience beyond Chrome, which is the de facto "decent" browser. He mentions Zen and Vivaldi as examples.

He then finishes the video gushing about how he loves helium, which is just ungoogled-chromium lol

isege• 10 months ago

a) He has a “I use the web in a very niche way that nobody cares about an your browser sucks if it doesn’t meet those exact needs” way of thinking

b) He is an investor in helium

coolgoose• 10 months ago

I am really trying to understand how the web would work with 0 ads.

I hate all the invasive pop-up crap ads with a passion, but this 0 ads just gets to a lot of gatekeeping, putting things under subscriptions etc.

chr15m• 10 months ago

Good. "Free" is a lie.

imcritic2• 10 months ago

It would work just fine. People will use search to find products they seek.

NetOpWibby2• 10 months ago

Yeesh, tough crowd in these comments. And yet everyone's excited for new Gmail skins. Anyway.

I hope more people take ungoogled-chromium and create new interfaces. It's a shame that Servo's in an unusable state, I'd love to see more tooling around that.

I just want someone to give me Opera 12...I suppose that's Vivaldi though.

rkomorn9• 10 months ago

I tried Opera a few months ago and could not stick to it. All the features they were pitching at me felt a little off. The various panel integrations were clunky and didn't seem to offer anything over just... tabs.

Maybe not surprisingly, I'm currently on Vivaldi (although it has its own issues of not infrequent slowness or hangs).

scottydelta• 10 months ago

Opera is the worse browser any one could give a chance in 2025: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39123477

Don’t let Opera cloud your judgement since it’s a poor choice to start with.

degosuke• 10 months ago

And Vivaldi also supports MV2 extensions - so uBlock origin still works without any issues.

presbyterian• 10 months ago

Vivaldi doesn't intend to maintain MV2, from their website:

We will keep Manifest v2 for as long as it’s still available in Chromium. We expect to drop support in June 2025, but we may maintain it longer or be forced to drop support for it sooner, depending on the precise nature of the changes to the code.

https://vivaldi.com/blog/manifest-v3-update-vivaldi-is-futur...

ramon156• 10 months ago

I still have all my marbles on Ladybird and have no reason to change this. Helium just seems like something that wasn't thought out very far

NetOpWibby2• 10 months ago

I’ll concede that it does look rather basic

WalterBright• 10 months ago

It's about time programmers stopped naming products and languages after elements and chemicals. Haven't we had enough of that?

We should name languages only after letters. After all, 26 languages should be enough for anybody.

vovavili4• 10 months ago

It's actually deliberately clever wordplay. Helium is light, chromium is heavy. Their browser is a set of patches to Chromium.

nayuki• 10 months ago

Fast, efficient, and light
Helium is based on Chromium
[screenshot image of geckos and lizards]

Is the marketing page deliberately trying to rub it in Mozilla's face?

dvh• 10 months ago

Get it to Ubuntu LTS repository and I will use it.

PeterStuer• 10 months ago

While chromium deep down, it seems they mostly ripped and repackaged from defunct projects and companies such as ungoogled-chromium and the irridium browser, right? Why would 2 cat avatars carry what others obviously failed to maintain?

V3ritas1337• 10 months ago

The only problem is it disables OOB security updates.

https://qua3k.github.io/ungoogled/

user39393824• 10 months ago

Helium also doesn't make any web requests without your explicit consent, it makes zero web requests on first launch.

God (I say as a prayer!) this is what I want for every single app and the OS. Currently on LibreWolf but will look at this carefully.

yoz-y• 10 months ago

I was excited for a new Helium browser release and it just turns out that people these days don’t even do a single google search before using a name that is already taken.

https://slashlos.github.io/Helium/

Tepix2• 10 months ago

Wow, that's a real fuckup.

sbbu• 10 months ago

No commits on that project for 5 years, so what are you talking about?

pazimzadeh• 10 months ago

Also, superseded by He3 https://slashlos.github.io/He3/

extraduder_ire4• 10 months ago

There are, unfortunately, only 118 different element names to choose from. Few of which end with -ium.

timschumi2• 10 months ago

Couldn't try to (together with Theo / t3) bully the Homebrew developers into a forced takeover of a package [1] if it were a conflict-free name.

[1] https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew-cask/pull/229061

AlkalineDreams• 10 months ago

The cask has not been majorly updated in almost 10 years years and is used to connect to a mobile app that hasn't been on the Play Store for almost 5 years, while easily underneath the minimum threshold of downloads for being removed. What's wrong with asking to expedite the removal process, considering the process is detailed in the guidelines?

miaugladiator11• 10 months ago

its been a daily driver for me for a pretty long time now and i can say that its amazing to work with.

i dangle between Zen and Helium and both are a very solid option imo. I don't really get all the browser wars

mixtureoftakes2• 10 months ago

WHY IS EVERYONE IN COMMENTS SO OLD AND BITTER WHAT ON EARTH ARE WE DOING

h4ch12• 10 months ago

I think it's a mixture of dislike for Google/Chrome and the constant Chromium reskins that dominate the browser market + Firefox evangelism.

I'll personally say I don't hate this project as such, I mainly use a Chromium based browser because I build a product that uses the FileSystem API with a directory picker [0] and the FileSystem Observer API [1]. Both of which aren't supported anywhere except Chromium based browsers.

I used to use Thorium, but last build was out in February and I simply can't use that as my main browser, so now I simply use ungoogled-chromium.

I can easily avoid any Google telemetry, use uBlock Origin with MV2, Privacy Badger and the plus point is all sites work. I love Firefox as well, but I feel you can't do much about the fact all "regular" people end up using Chrome or Safari; so while developing on the web you simply can't become a Firefox main and avoid chromium entirely.

[0] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Window/show... [1] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/FileSystemO...

ranguna2• 10 months ago

Why are you writing in upper case?

To me, that contributes to the overall uncomfortability

MinusGix• 10 months ago

Generally because there's not that much to comment on, as this is effectively a somewhat prettier ungoogled chromium, and so there's not much room to make positive comments. Though I agree people get caught up in negativity easily.

whatarethembits• 10 months ago

  > We'll keep support for MV2 extensions for as long as possible

I can maybe overlook it being based on chromium, but I don't want to migrate to a new browser and have to migrate again when uBlock Origin stops working eventually.

Zen browser is my home currently, I think Arc has broken my ability to move back to traditional tab management.

wildredkraut• 10 months ago

Releasing a browser without cross OS support incl. mobile devices, makes no sense now a days. Extension support and bookmarks sync is also a must have. That's why Firefox is still my browser.

sylware• 10 months ago

Indeed, we need a real alternative, something really bringing new on the table: we need a modern web engine we can compile with a simple C compiler.

Those "browsers" are just front-end to the web engines of the whatng cartel.

Fizzadar• 10 months ago

Yet another wrapper on chromium, no thank you.

We'll keep support for MV2 extensions for as long as possible.

“As long as possible” being _exactly_ why chromium wrappers have zero value.

janfoeh• 10 months ago

While I am not interested for the same reasons many others have stated here, I would like to point out that their privacy policy is exemplary:

Helium does not make any network requests, including to the Services, unless such requests are the result of user actions (for example, visiting a website or installing an extension) or are part of features that the user has explicitly enabled or configured during setup. If Helium is making any network requests without your consent, please file a bug report.

Gold standard.

defraudbah• 10 months ago

It's a good plan to plug-in AI into chromium and sell it to someone like atlassian. Or you know, ask MS to invest a couple mil and buy azure infrastructure from them. VC go brrr..

I'll stick with FF or brave until Mullvad or else comes up with a good alternative

lerp-io• 10 months ago

i think we have enough asshole logos already guys

pshirshov2• 10 months ago

No adware, no bloat, no noise.

And, apparently, no tree style tabs, no vertical tabs at all.

kristofferR• 10 months ago

What does Tree Style Tabs offer that Sidebery doesn't?

I switched to it and haven't looked back. The tab search functionality is so damn nice.

pshirshov2• 10 months ago

Nothing, Sideberry is just a more modern TST implementation. I referred Tree Style Tabs as a UI pattern, not one particular extension.

neves2• 10 months ago

Why Helium is better than Brave, another privacy conscious browser based on Chromium?

Alifatisk• 10 months ago

New browser
Based on Chromium

Sigh...

gwbas1c5• 10 months ago

There are a lot of privacy browsers floating around. I'm a big fan of Brave, and it took me some digging to see the difference.

In my case, the lack of sync is a big show stopper for me. Brave syncs without "cloud." Instead, it syncs when you have the browser open on both devices.

gwbas1c5• 10 months ago

I'm less interested in privacy browsers that just use Chromium and then slap some chrome around it.

Instead, what I want is a browser that actively blocks annoying page behaviors. For example, I want a browser that makes all text on a page selectable, prevents a page from trapping right-click, prevents a page from accessing the clipboard, ect, ect.

sonicggg• 10 months ago

It's just a Brave Browser copycat

frizlab• 10 months ago

Try the StopTheMadness extension. It is a godsend.

gwbas1c5• 10 months ago

Is that Safari-only or Mac-only? I can't seem to find a way to install it into Brave on Windows from https://underpassapp.com/StopTheMadness/

carlosjobim• 10 months ago

That browser is Safari, configured with the option to open all pages in reader mode.

endunless• 10 months ago

What is the auto-update mechanism on macOS? One of the primary reasons I use ungoogled chromium is because I can update it via homebrew myself. I don’t trust browsers with running invisible background auto-updaters.

loughnane• 10 months ago

Like many others here, I too am turned off by it being Chromium.

davedx• 10 months ago

Unlike others, I like that it's Chromium because it means I get the devtools. Whenever I try to use other browsers I always get held back by how they work in other browsers, and I do a lot of front-end dev.

I'm posting this comment from Helium and so far, so good! I would honestly say ignore the naysayers, everything is a trade off, including which browser engine you put under the hood.

Jcampuzano2• 10 months ago

Same, I wanted to like Zen browser for instance but I just could not keep using it because I cannot stand Firefox devtools. I'm too used to chromes.

If I could have a version of zen that looked exactly like it but had their devtools it'd probably be my main driver.

bearjaws• 10 months ago

Still Chromium based, I will stick with Zen.

err4nt• 10 months ago

Back about 20 years ago there was a lightweight Gecko-based web browser called 'Camino' that was a delight compared to Firefox or other 'full' browsers. It was fast, simplified, and still rendered pages well. I didn't always use it, but it was a joy to use.

I downloaded Helium and gave it a spin and my first impression was "Ah, it's like Camino all over again". I can't use this for my job where I need to use stock {Chrome, Safari, Firefox, Edge} because our customers do - but for personal browsing I'm currently using Arc which is very comfortable but heavy, I might try to use Helium for quick simple things when I want less overhead! Thanks for sharing!

ValentineC• 10 months ago

I miss Camino! There was a period in time (pre-Blink) where it offered the best compatibility with websites built for IE6.

antonyh• 10 months ago

I'm not sure why I'd bother using this when it's just another Chromium browser.

As it currently stands, I'm leaning more into WebKit-based, but for daily use it's Firefox. I'm not happy with any of them, but I'd struggle to pick just one right now.

yggdrasil_ai• 10 months ago

I am happy using brave after disabling most of their own features. Any reason I should give this a go?

andai2• 10 months ago

Where is the scroll bar?

smacker2• 10 months ago

I tried it a few days ago, a privacy-focused Chrome that doesn't break browsing experience resonates with me. The team seems to care about quality and the browser felt good overall.

A few things that made me go back to Brave: - No vertical tabs - Sync with mobile - I haven't found how to show bookmarks bar only on blank page - Little customization for new tab page (might be fixable using extensions)

I'll definitely follow the project as Brave is far from perfect too.

vohk• 10 months ago

Regarding the bookmarks bar, Settings / Appearance / Show Bookmarks Bar. If the setting is off, the bar only appears on new tabs. I found that by accident.

smacker2• 10 months ago

thank you! Indeed, it is shown on a new tab in such case!

dheera• 10 months ago

MacOS

If you want to target privacy nerds, please consider supporting Linux off the bat.

NoSalt• 10 months ago

Woah ... the FIRST "privacy-based" browser in, at least, 29 days. That's amazing!

scdnc• 10 months ago

If any devs are reading: please add compact tabs like safari and an extension that summarizes pages/video transcripts and enables LLM chat with that context.

OrangeMusic• 10 months ago

What's the difference between this and Brave?

Helium Browser

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