Looking for Privacy-Oriented Open-Source Android Browsers
I’m looking for a privacy-focused, open-source Android browser. Here are some options I’ve found:
- IronFox – Privacy-oriented and recommended by LibreWolf. GitLab Link
- Fennec F-Droid –. F-Droid Link
- Waterfox – Waterfox Link
- Librewolf – Privacy-focused but not sure about Android support.
- iceraven – seems to be the best? iceraven
Is there any other browser out there that fits this criteria? Is there an even better choice? I’m particularly interested in ones that focus on privacy.
Iceraven often lags behind on security updates. I know you specified privacy, but good to keep in mind.
I use Ironfox, because I previously used Mull (rip) with RethinkDNS, and Orbot
See also:
Firefox-based
Chromium-based
WebView-based
Isn’t webview-based still essentially chromium-based?
Sorta. It’s the same engine, but it is generally less private and less secure than actual Chromium.
DivestOS used to have some handy tables, before they shut down the website.
I know Brave is controversial but they were the only ones (edit: not sure about Vanadium, I’m curious if they were vulnerable) disallowing JS to access localhost thus blocking Meta and Yandex’s recently discovered spying.
Sounds like such a no brainer to not allow random websites to communicate with the localhost and very easily circumvent all sandboxing you spent thousands of hours building. Looking at you Android (Google) and all the browser vendors (also Google?, huh).
Huh, I didn’t know that. I wonder if any of the rest have implemented that since…
Thanks a lot!
Fennec development has not stop, why do you think that’s the case? The github repo shows it’s on the current firefox build.
I’m a bit confused. Its name has changed to Fenix?
No it’s Fennec: https://gitlab.com/relan/fennecbuild maybe you are confusing it with Fenix which was the official android Firefox browser: https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix but is not developed anymore.
Much appreciated!
Be aware that Firefox-based browsers on Android are horrible for security and don’t even have an internal sandbox.
If you decide to download IronFox, download it through Accrescent, since it enforces that the devs or anyone else won’t push a malicious update.
Edit: fixed an ambiguous sentence
Uhm, the Java VM is already there, separated by Linux groups and caged by SeLinux. Why sandbox?
I don’t think you can install it outside of GrapheneOS though
Probably also Mullvad Browser and Tor Browser, but I don’t know them much
Mullvad has ceased development
Edit: my bad I was confused with a different firefox based browser
Updated 1 day ago
Can you drop a github link for Fennec pls?
Just use F-droid and search for Fennec browser there. Or my preferred way is using Obtainium and manually searching for the version on GitHub, latest right now is 139.0.4
in fdroid it gives "The upstream source code is not entirely Free " in the description. Does this mean the project is somewhat semi-Open-Source?
The upstream source code is not entirely Free
It’s complicated but F-Droid flags software that may have parts in it that are not entirely free, fennec is a fork of Firefox and within the source code F-Droid is finding that there is something that isn’t totally foss. I suggest using obtainium ( look for it in F-Droid) and find the GitHub version of fennec.
Sincere thanks! but it seems IceRaven is better, I guess im going to go with that
Define privacy, because all of these browsers report each URL you visit to the operating system.
Ain’t nobody drawing a diagram to get an app.
Hardly asking for a diagram. But outside of Tor, what do the others offer over Firefox really? So it’s a valid question.
You think your OS doesn’t see what your doing in Tor or any other app?
Android seeing where you’re going is by design, there’s no circumventing that.
I guess what I need is a comparison of those browsers since they all seem to be ‘private’ enough. What is the one with the best performance and more features?
