Ungoogled Chromium
Chromium-based free web browser
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Ungoogled Chromium (stylized as ungoogled-chromium) is a free and open-source fork of the Chromium web browser that removes all Google-specific web services.[5][6][7] It achieves this with a series of patches applied to the Chromium codebase during the compilation process. The result is functionally similar to regular Chromium.[8][9]
| ungoogled-chromium | |
|---|---|
| |
 ungoogled-chromium 134 on Windows 10 | |
| Developers | Eloston and other hobbyists, collectively called "Ungoogled Software"[1][2] |
| Initial release | 14 December 2015 |
| Stable release | |
| Engine | V8, Blink  |
| Operating system | Linux, macOS, Microsoft Windows, Android, BSD |
| Platform | x86-64, AArch64, ARMv7, IA-32 |
| License | 3-clause BSD License[4] |
| Website | ungoogled-software |
| Repository | https://github.com/ungoogled-software/ungoogled-chromium |
Features
- Disabling functionality that requires connection to Google, including Google Safe Browsing.[10]
- Replacing Google web domains with non-existent domains, and blocking internal requests to those domains.[10]
- Removing binary blobs from the Chromium source code and replacing them with custom alternatives.[10]
- Adding dozens of flags to change browser behavior that is otherwise unconfigurable.[10]
Some features of regular Chromium do not work the same on ungoogled-chromium. For example, a special browser extension, called chromium-web-store, is required to install other extensions from the Chrome Web Store.[11]
History
The ungoogled-chromium project was founded by a hobbyist with the username Eloston in 2015. It was first developed for Linux, then for other operating systems.[12][13] Eloston used to release builds, but eventually he stopped doing so and allowed others to provide builds with his patches.[14]
Starting in 2019, Eloston greatly reduced his involvement in the project, and other developers have continued to maintain the patches.[1] In 2022, the GitHub repository was transferred from Eloston's personal account to a new "ungoogled-software" account.[15]