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.
qutebrowser is not technically a "Python web browser". The GUI uses Python Qt bindings, and the browser engine itself is QtWebEngine. Python is simply the glue that ties it all together, and any language could be used instead, since performance is not a concern. This is why there are so many small niche "web browsers", such as Luakit, Nyxt, surf, etc.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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
>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?
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.
> 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).
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
> and it turns out colbalt, too!
And https://meow.camera
It's based on ungoogled-chromium and about 3 people are working on it.
https://github.com/imputnet/helium
I would not feel comfortable with my browsing data being in the hands of 3 random people.
And it's written in Python.
Actually it's mostly patch files but they're ignored by github.
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.
qutebrowser is not technically a "Python web browser". The GUI uses Python Qt bindings, and the browser engine itself is QtWebEngine. Python is simply the glue that ties it all together, and any language could be used instead, since performance is not a concern. This is why there are so many small niche "web browsers", such as Luakit, Nyxt, surf, etc.
Surely performance is even less of a concern for a set of tools applying one time patches to ungoogled chromium?
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.
oh ok, welp, :shrug:
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.
I just can't go back to horizontal tabs anymore.
vertical tabs never really worked for me. What would you say are the biggest benefits for you?
What are you using instead?
Probably Zen, as Arc is dead
Zen is lovely but I actually really miss the little arc window. Didn't realize how much I used it until it was gone. Sticking with Arc for now.
Arc works fine; Orion (Kagi's browser) is like an Arc built on WebKit.
Pretty sure both Firefox and Microsoft Edge both offer it as an option too.
And Brave
Orion, too.
Arc
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?
Same. I generally avoid Chrome-based browsers on all devices.
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.
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?
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.
They say they'll support MV2 "as long as possible".
Make an Android version that supports extensions (preferably MV2) like the now abandoned Kiwi Browser did and I'll be very interested.
Having the option to set Kagi as my search engine right away is nice. I wish more browsers included Kagi as an option.
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!
What's the catch? Looks too good to be true.
It looks like a pretty normal chromium variant to me? It's nice to see the work of ungoogled-chromium given a nicer skin.
It’s playing the Browser Company playbook
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
One way to expand even faster is to put out a quasi OSS
And the biggest problem with extensions is their security model of permissions. How is this solving for that?
>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?
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.
> 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).
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.
Wow another chromium skin, how exciting.
Does it support PWAs?
From the website
> Install any web apps and use them as standalone desktop apps without duplicating Chromium.
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?
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.
> There are currently 2 of us
Nope. No. Thank you.
Props for featuring Kagi though.
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.
Firefox does that too and avoid this issue reserving a small space on right site of title bar. Not the end of the world.
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.
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.