Helium Browser
24 comments
·September 24, 2025MountDoom
Daedren
>We'll keep support for MV2 extensions for as long as possible.
This doesn't particularly give people any confidence in your product if even the devs don't know how long they can hold the line. Why not fork Firefox like Zen?
tchbnl
Having the option to set Kagi as my search engine right away is nice. I wish more browsers included Kagi as an option.
MYEUHD
It's based on ungoogled-chromium and about 3 people are working on it.
koakuma-chan
And it's written in Python.
_--__--__
From a few months of use I think qutebrowser is good enough to prove that a python web browser is not inherently a bad idea.
imiric
qutebrowser is not technically a "Python web browser". The GUI uses Python Qt bindings, and the browser engine itself is QtWebEngine. Python is simply the glue that ties it all together, and any language could be used instead, since performance is not a concern. This is why there are so many small niche "web browsers", such as Luakit, Nyxt, surf, etc.
barbazoo
I just can't go back to horizontal tabs anymore.
ghm2199
Does it have manifest V2 like CNAM filtering? And if it's chromium based how is it going to support back port of features that are making it to chromium without investment in a robust dev team?
webstrand
It's based on ungoogled-chromium which applies https://github.com/ungoogled-software/ungoogled-chromium/blo... to retain manifest v2 features. They're likely dependent on ungoogled-chromium for maintaining this feature.
mantra2
They say they'll support MV2 "as long as possible".
tyre
How will they make money? Or is this always meant to be OSS community supported?
The challenge is that people have to get paid and infrastructure to build things costs money. Looks like there are only two people full-time at the company right now, though even then eventually they’ll need some revenue stream.
I love this project, but to have confidence that it stays that way it would be nice to see how they’ll replace they’ll stay afloat.
ghqst
My biggest problem with Thorium was lack of updates, so I hope Helium is able to remain consistent with updates. Congrats on the launch, cobalt crew!
FinnKuhn
Can someone explain to me how this differentiates itself from (ungoogled) Chromium with a few tweaks?
How does it compare to Firefox privacy wise being based on chromium?
system7rocks
Same. I generally avoid Chrome-based browsers on all devices.
haolez
What's the catch? Looks too good to be true.
webstrand
It looks like a pretty normal chromium variant to me? It's nice to see the work of ungoogled-chromium given a nicer skin.
nextworddev
It’s playing the Browser Company playbook
ghm2199
And the biggest problem with extensions is their security model of permissions. How is this solving for that?
nextworddev
Yet another chrome os fork trying to flip to a SaaS company
What makes me a bit uneasy about the project is that the website doesn't explain who is building it. For most open-source, I think that would be fine. But browsers auto-update, so their vendors essentially have the continued ability to run code on your machine. You want some confidence that they won't get owned and won't sell the access to bad actors down the line, so there is an element of personal trust.
All the website gives me is the name of a Wyoming LLC, Wyoming being one of the states you incorporate in if you don't want others to be able to find out who runs the company.
Granted, you can find out a bit more on Github, but in general, if you're building privacy- and security-critical tech... I think you ought to own it.