ungoogled-chromium-android

Please see CHANGELOG for newest updates.

A lightweight approach to removing Google web service dependency

Note: this is an Android build.

ungoogled-chromium is Google Chromium, sans dependency on Google web services. It also features some tweaks to enhance privacy, control, and transparency (almost all of which require manual activation or enabling).

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.

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

Content Overview

• Differences from ungoogled-chromium
• Platforms and Versions
• Building Instructions
• Reporting and Contributing
• Extensions
• F-droid Repository
• TODO List
• Credits
• Related Projects
• License

Differences from ungoogled-chromium

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

• Android specific patches and fixes are applied.
• Default configuration builds for arm64 instead of x64.

Platforms and Versions

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

• {BUILD_TARGET} is one of ChromePublic, MonoChromePublic, SystemWebview.
  • ChromePublic is for API > 19 (Android 4.4) and only contains the browser.
  • MonoChromePublic is for API > 24 (Android 7.0) and contains both the browser and the webview.
  • SystemWebview is for API 21 - 23 (Android 5.0 - 6.0) and only contains the webview.
• {CPU_ARCH} is one of x86, arm (armeabi-v7a), arm64 (arm64-v8a).
• Please also read this important note about Webview on Android N-P.
• The Bromite Wiki can also be helpful.

Building Instructions

This build is built from Sylvain Beucler's libre Android rebuilds instead of SDK/NDK binaries from Google.

• Clone this repository
• If you want to enable proprietary codecs (h264, mp3, mp4, etc.), add proprietary_codecs=true to the end of android_flags.gn. It is now the default, since proprietary_codecs does not add the actual codecs, only codes to handle those file types.
• enter repo directory and run ./build.sh.

Build time dependencies can be roughly referred from AUR.

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

Reporting and Contributing

• For reporting and contacting, see SUPPORT
• This project is still in its early stage, so contributions are welcomed. Currently, the major task is to remove proprietary Google dependencies.

Extensions

Note: the Extension-support version is highly experimental and unstable. Only use it if you want to help testing, or you know what you are doing! I will not be responsible for any loss or damage caused.

Only loading unpacked crx is tested. The extensions are likely not fully functional yet.

Currently only Android 5.1+ is supported. More will come in the future.

To install extensions:

1. Download extension following the instructions here.
2. Extract the crx file into a folder withunzip/7z and copy the folder to your device. Make sure you have read access to that folder.
3. Open "chrome://extensions/" and enable Developer mode, refresh.
4. Click Load unpacked and select the folder you copied. Notice that Android has two file selections, one for selecting files and one for selecting folders. Make sure you use the right one.
5. Refresh and you shall see the extension in the list.

F-droid Repository

I have set up an experimental f-droid repository. Because of the limitation of its server tools, only arm64 version is hosted.

You can use f-Droid client and add this repository.

Credits

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

Related Projects

• Bromite (Another build for Android. Has some own features.)

License

See LICENSE