ungoogled-chromium

Features

This section overviews the features of ungoogled-chromium. For more detailed information, it is best to consult the source code.

Contents of this section:

Key Features

These are the core features introduced by ungoogled-chromium.

  • Disable functionality specific to Google domains (e.g. Google Host Detector, Google URL Tracker, Google Cloud Messaging, Google Hotwording, etc.)
  • Block internal requests to Google at runtime. This feature is a fail-safe measure for the above, in case Google changes or introduces new components that our patches do not disable. This feature is implemented by replacing many Google web domains in the source code with non-existent alternatives ending in qjz9zk (known as domain substitution; see docs/design.md for details), then modifying Chromium to block its own requests with such domains. In other words, no connections are attempted to the qjz9zk domain.
  • Strip binaries from the source code (known as binary pruning; see docs/design.md for details)

Enhancing Features

These are the non-essential features introduced by ungoogled-chromium.

  • Add many new command-line switches and chrome://flags entries to configure new features (which are disabled by default). See docs/flags.md for the exhaustive list.
  • Add Suggestions URL text field in the search engine editor (chrome://settings/searchEngines) for customizing search engine suggestions.
  • Add more URL schemes allowed to save page schemes.
  • Add Omnibox search provider “No Search” to allow disabling of searching
  • Add a custom cross-platform build configuration and packaging wrapper for Chromium. It currently supports many Linux distributions, macOS, and Windows. (See docs/design.md for details on the system.)
  • Force all pop-ups into tabs
  • Disable automatic formatting of URLs in Omnibox (e.g. stripping http://, hiding certain parameters)
  • Disable intranet redirect detector (extraneous DNS requests)
    • This breaks captive portal detection, but captive portals still work.
  • (Iridium Browser feature change) Prevent URLs with the trk: scheme from connecting to the Internet
    • Also prevents any URLs with the top-level domain qjz9zk (as used in domain substitution) from attempting a connection.
  • (Windows-specific) Do not set the Zone Identifier on downloaded files

Borrowed Features

In addition to the features introduced by ungoogled-chromium, ungoogled-chromium selectively borrows many features from the following projects (in approximate order of significance):

Supported Platforms and Distributions

See docs/platforms.md for a list of supported platforms.

Other platforms are discussed and tracked in this repository’s Issue Tracker. Learn more about using the Issue Tracker in the Support page.