Ungoogled Chromium - Chrome without Google functions

[webfork]

It's been mentioned a few times now but thought I'd give it a separate thread. I don't love the name but have to admit their goals couldn't be more clear.

Without signing in to a Google Account, Chromium does pretty well in terms of security and privacy. However, Chromium still has some dependency on Google web services and binaries. In addition, Google designed Chromium to be easy and intuitive for users, which means they compromise on transparency and control of internal operations.

ungoogled-chromium addresses these issues in the following ways:

* Remove all remaining background requests to any web services while building and running the browser
* Remove all code specific to Google web services
* Remove all uses of pre-made binaries from the source code, and replace them with user-provided alternatives when possible.
* Disable features that inhibit control and transparency, and add or modify features that promote them (these changes will almost always require manual activation or enabling).

A few notes on this description:

• Not tweaked out for privacy. That last bullet seems to mean that, because the program is very keen to maintain similarity with Google Chrome, some of the better privacy features are an extra (manual) step.

• More than cutting, it's blocking It's not just disabling Google service code, the program even blocks internal requests to Google at runtime to avoid workarounds by Chromium developers (many of whom work for Google) written into the code.

• No screenshot? I skipped this step just because -- again -- the clear focus looking and acting like regular Chrome.

License: BSD. Unlike a lot of browsers right now (Chrome, Edge, Opera, Vivaldi, etc.), it's fully open source. This is especially amusing because there's a whole section on different browser tweaks used by other neighboring open source projects that they've adopted either partially or as a whole. Which was (I believe) the whole point of the open source concept in the first place. It's weird how that got lost over time.

Status: Untested. While they do make a portable version available, I'm not optimistic that it actually keeps all settings saved locally. There's just too much in the Chromium software that wasn't written with portability in mind.

Home: https://github.com/Eloston/ungoogled-chromium

Download: https://www.softpedia.com/get/Internet/ ... mium.shtml (using Softpedia because the home page has a source-only release section)

Add-on compatibility: No idea. Some are likely to break but with the focus on maintaining standard Chrome behavior, it's also possible there won't be any issues. EDIT: Freakazoid covered this in a post below.

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Site note: in case this ever gets it's own entry, I think first mention belongs to freakazoid.

What about Ungoogled Android? There are a few efforts out there on this front, but one in particular that looks like it's coming along well is /E/OS: https://e.foundation/ There is a project with this specific name but I'm not linking to it as the program is a mostly empty fork and not a real project.

[freakazoid]

I use Ungoogled Chromium via henrypp's chrlauncher.

It's quite portable as long as you use the --disable-machine-id command-line flag in the chrlauncher.ini file. See https://github.com/Eloston/ungoogled-ch ... on-windows. There is also a --disable-encryption flag, which helps with portability, but I haven't used that one myself.

Extensions can be installed and auto-updated via the Chromium Web Store extension by NeverDecaf: https://github.com/NeverDecaf/chromium-web-store. All extensions should work just like their Google Chrome counterpart.

As for:

What about Ungoogled Android? There are a few efforts out there on this front, but one in particular that looks like it's coming along well is /E/OS: https://e.foundation/ There is a project with this specific name but I'm not linking to it as the program is a mostly empty fork and not a real project.

I'm not a fan of /e/. They bundle a lot of apps that I'll never use myself. Would rather just use LineageOS, which /e/ is derived from and receives faster updates. If I had a device that supported it, I'd use CalyxOS though.

[bitcoin]

Ungoogled Chromium also available at PortApps - they tweak the Eloston version:

https://portapps.io/app/ungoogled-chromium-portable/

[webfork]

Ungoogled Chromium also available at PortApps - they tweak the Eloston version:

https://portapps.io/app/ungoogled-chromium-portable/

As this was last updated in Jan and there's a major recent flaw out for Chromium, I can't really recommend people use that version. Or does it auto-update?

[bitcoin]

Ungoogled Chromium also available at PortApps - they tweak the Eloston version:

https://portapps.io/app/ungoogled-chromium-portable/

As this was last updated in Jan and there's a major recent flaw out for Chromium, I can't really recommend people use that version. Or does it auto-update?

i doubt it

[Midas]

Being somewhat fed up with Google overbearing antics, I went looking for alternatives for the only platform I use where you can't escape Chrome/ium: Android -- it's pre-installed everywhere under the innocent guise of the Webview component...

So, awareness that alternatives do exist may be welcome... as long as your device is rooted!

Check out Bromite if you're interested: https://www.bromite.org/system_web_view. (Further info at https://forum.f-droid.org/t/7786, for instance; there's even a ready-made Magisk module for auto-installing it called Webview Manager made by Androidacy and among its options is using Ungoogled Chromium instead.)

What about Ungoogled Android? There are a few efforts out there on this front, but one in particular that looks like it's coming along well is /E/OS: https://e.foundation/ There is a project with this specific name but I'm not linking to it as the program is a mostly empty fork and not a real project.

I'm not a fan of /e/. They bundle a lot of apps that I'll never use myself. Would rather just use LineageOS, which /e/ is derived from and receives faster updates.

I have e.foundation's /e/ (epsilon?) installed in one of my devices (an old phone I use as a Bluetooth mediaplayer), Lineage OS in my tablet and LOS-based Ressurection Remix OS in my daily driver phone. And one of the reasons for the choice of the particular brand and model of the latter was precisely its being /e/ supported.

I think that /e/ is far from perfect but I also think that it isn't fair to judge it too harshly for its choice of bundled apps (which one can easily disable through ADB, BTW...). After all, they're trying to be on par with Google's platform out-of-the-box functionality, while steering clear of their privacy damaging practices. Bear in mind /e/ isn't just a custom ROM, it's also marketed with their own devices under the Murena brand (e.g., Fairphones and some refurbished Samsungs, check https://esolutions.shop/).

TL;DR all my devices are rooted -- chiefly because it's inconceivable to me that I'd be a mere guest in my own device but also because I find privacy protection measures, like replacing the builtin Webview and adblocking with Adaway, as essential phone features nowadays.

[Mixture]

I downloaded from Softpedia the latest version of Ungoogled Chromium Installer and tried to install it. It immediately ran like a portable. I imported my Bookmarks from Brave and tried installing Extensions. Nothing. Every page now shows advertisements! I cannot install uBlock Origin to stop the unneeded, unwanted, and unnecessary ads! Ungoogled Chromium is totally useless to me if I cannot add my favorite privacy and security extensions.

[Mixture]

After using Revo to get rid of Ungoogled Chromium, I did find out it was installed.

[freakazoid]

I cannot install uBlock Origin to stop the unneeded, unwanted, and unnecessary ads! Ungoogled Chromium is totally useless to me if I cannot add my favorite privacy and security extensions.

As I mentioned in my post above, you need to use the Chromium Web Store extension by NeverDecaf in order to install and update extensions when using Ungoogled Chromium.