In Operation
Here’s an image of the web browser in action.
The software is essentially a collection of patches applied to Chromium during the compilation process. This means that it’s a drop-in replacement for Chromium as opposed to other forks.
What do the patches provide? At one level they remove functionality and introduce blocking elements.
- Disables functionality that needs Google domains, such as Google Safe Browsing, Google Host Detector, Google URL Tracker, Google Cloud Messaging, and Google Hotwording.
- Blocks internal requests to Google at runtime.
- Removes binary blobs from the Chromium source code and replaces them with custom alternatives.
- Disables extraneous DNS requests.
But ungoogled-chromium is not just about disabling functionality that ties you to Google’s telemetry. The project also adds features including lots of command-line switches which makes the web browser much more configurable than Chromium. The project has also added suggestions URL text field, more URL schemes, as well as an Omnibox search provider “No Search”.
Summary
Chromium has a very good reputation. It’s secure, hardened, and sandboxed. ungoogled-chromium builds on this reputation by offering a lightweight approach to removing the Google web service dependency. Besides the privacy and transparency benefits, the project has also added some useful features.
ungoogled-chromium has received more than 18K GitHub stars.
Website: github.com/ungoogled-software/ungoogled-chromium
Support:
Developer: The ungoogled-chromium Authors / The Chromium Authors
License: BSD 3-Clause License
ungoogled-chromium’s patches are written in Python. Learn Python with our recommended free books and free tutorials.
Pages in this article:
Page 1 – Introduction and Installation
Page 2 – In Operation and Summary
Related Software
| Web Browsers | |
|---|---|
| Google Chrome | Secure web browser with minimalistic user interface |
| Firefox | Highly popular browser delivering safe, easy web browsing |
| ungoogled-chromium | Chromium without Google web services |
| Chromium | Open-source project behind Google Chrome |
| Opera | Popular graphical web browser and Internet suite |
| Vivaldi | Designed for staunch technologists and former Opera browser users |
| Tor Browser | Protect against tracking, surveillance, and censorship |
| Waterfox | Fast and privacy conscious web browser powered by Gecko, |
| Pale Moon | Goanna-based web browser |
| Konqueror | KDE's advanced file manager, web browser and document viewer |
Read our verdict in the software roundup.
 Explore our comprehensive directory of recommended free and open source software. Our carefully curated collection spans every major software category.This directory is part of our ongoing series of informative articles for Linux enthusiasts. It features hundreds of detailed reviews, along with open source alternatives to proprietary solutions from major corporations such as Google, Microsoft, Apple, Adobe, IBM, Cisco, Oracle, and Autodesk. You’ll also find interesting projects to try, hardware coverage, free programming books and tutorials, and much more. Discovered a useful open source Linux program that we haven’t covered yet? Let us know by completing this form. |