ungoogled-chromium-android

Please see CHANGELOG for latest updates.

A lightweight approach to removing Google web service dependency

Note: this is an Android build.

Help is welcome!

For more information on ungoogled-chromium, please visit the original repo: ungoogled-software/ungoogled-chromium.

Content Overview

• Objectives
• Differences from ungoogled-chromium
• Limitations
• Platforms and Versions
• Building Instructions
• Reporting and Contributing
• Extensions
• Credits
• Related Projects
• License

Objectives

In descending order of significance (i.e. most important objective first):

1. ungoogled-chromium is Google Chromium, sans dependency on Google web services.
2. ungoogled-chromium retains the default Chromium experience as closely as possible. Unlike other Chromium forks that have their own visions of a web browser, ungoogled-chromium is essentially a drop-in replacement for Chromium.
3. ungoogled-chromium features tweaks to enhance privacy, control, and transparency. However, almost all of these features must be manually activated or enabled. For more details, see Feature Overview.

Differences from ungoogled-chromium

These are the differences between a Linux build of ungoogled-chromium and ungoogled-chromium-android.

• Disable/Remove Android specific functionalities:
  • Contextual search
  • Home page, off by default
  • Location, falling back to the system provider
  • New Tab Page suggested sites
  • Offline indicator
  • Safe Browsing, compiled out along with its lookups
  • Terms-of-Service prompt and metrics opt-out
  • Unnecessary account permissions
• Android specific enhancements:
  • Add flag to always send save-data in header
  • Add flag to clear browsing data on exit
  • Add flag to disable WebRTC. This flag is enabled by default.
  • Rename the package to org.ungoogled.chromium, so it can be installed alongside Chrome
• Borrowed from Bromite:
  • Always incognito mode
  • Disable DRM media preprovisioning which leaks connections
  • Disable updater pings
  • DNS-over-https where the network supports it
  • Restore the flag to disable the pull-to-refresh effect
  • WebGL flag
• Borrowed from Cromite:
  • Bookmark import/export options
  • Clear open tabs between sessions
  • Exit menu item
  • Force tablet UI
  • Proxy configuration
• Borrowed from Vanadium:
  • Ask before playing protected media
  • Disable article suggestions, background sync and sensor access
  • Disable autofill server communication
  • Disable media router and media remoting
  • Disable metrics
  • Disable seed-based field trials, variations fetching and WebView variations
  • Disable showing popular sites
  • Disable the first run welcome page
  • Disable using Play services fonts
  • Enable split cache and strict site isolation
  • Various compiling time enhancements
• All Google play and Google service related blobs are removed. This includes Firebase, GCM (Google Cloud Messaging), GMS (Google Mobile Services) and bridge to Google Play.
• Releases are built for arm and arm64, plus an .aab for arm64. There is no x86 or x64 build.

Limitations

The enhancements included in ungoogled-chromium are not to be considered useful for journalists, people living in countries with freedom limitations, and those who are facing government-level adversaries. Please look at tools specifically developed for these purposes, for example Tor Browser in such cases.

Platforms and Versions

Pre-built apks are named as {BUILD_TARGET}_{CPU_ARCH}.apk, where:

• {BUILD_TARGET} is ChromePublic (previously ChromeModernPublic from previous maintainer wchen342), for API >= 29 (Android 10), browser only.
• {CPU_ARCH} is one of arm (armeabi-v7a), arm64 (arm64-v8a).
• Previous maintainer also built Trichrome, SystemWebView, x86 for releases. My builds are currently done local rather than automating through github; if there's enough people requesting further builds I can spend the time to set this up.
• The ungoogled-chromium wiki, Cromite documentation, Vanadium and the Bromite wiki can also be helpful.

Building Instructions

This build uses the SDK/NDK/JDK from the gclient checkout. Android rebuilds, used by earlier versions, is no longer maintained.

• Clone this repository
• Make sure you have enough disk space and memory to build chromium
• enter repo directory and run ./build.sh.

Build time dependencies:

    bison
    bzip2
    clang
    curl
    default-jdk
    file
    flex
    git
    gnupg2
    gperf
    lib32gcc-s1
    lib32stdc++6
    libc6-dev-i386
    libc6-i386
    libdbus-1-dev
    libdrm-dev
    libexpat1-dev
    libglib2.0-dev
    libkrb5-dev
    libnss3-dev
    libxkbcommon-dev
    lld
    llvm
    lsb-release
    make
    nodejs
    npm
    patch
    perl
    python3
    rsync
    tar
    unzip
    uuid-dev
    wget
    yasm

    bison
    bzip2
    clang
    curl
    dbus-devel
    expat-devel
    file
    flex
    git
    glib2-devel
    glibc-devel.i686
    glibc.i686
    gnupg2
    gperf
    java-latest-openjdk-devel
    krb5-devel
    libdrm-devel
    libgcc.i686
    libstdc++.i686
    libuuid-devel
    libxkbcommon-devel
    lld
    llvm
    make
    nodejs
    npm
    nss-devel
    patch
    perl
    python3
    redhat-lsb-core
    rsync
    tar
    unzip
    wget
    yasm

    bison
    bzip2
    clang
    curl
    dbus
    expat
    file
    flex
    git
    glib2
    gnupg
    gperf
    jdk-openjdk
    krb5
    lib32-gcc-libs
    lib32-glibc
    libdrm
    libxkbcommon
    lld
    llvm
    lsb-release
    make
    nodejs
    npm
    nss
    patch
    perl
    python
    rsync
    tar
    unzip
    util-linux
    wget
    yasm

Builds are untested on other distros besides Debian.

For a more customized building process, see building instructions from the original repo or Cromite.

Reporting and Contributing

• For reporting issues and contacting, see SUPPORT
• Bug reports and code contributions are welcomed.

Extensions

The extension support version has been discontinued. The last version is 88.0.4324.182. It will still be available for downloading, but no new version will be released.

The extension patches can be found at chromium-android-extension. Anyone interested is welcomed to fork and keeps working on it.

Re-supporting extensions is being worked on, since many Android browsers now carry extension support.

Credits

• The Chromium Project
• ungoogled-chromium
• xsmile's fork
• Bromite
• Cromite
• Vanadium
• Unobtainium
• Kiwi Browser
• dvalter's patches

Related Projects

• Cromite (Bromite successor)
• Vanadium (Browser for GrapheneOS)
• Bromite (Discontinued Android build)

License

See LICENSE.