this post was submitted on 20 Jun 2025
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Privacy

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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
    • recommended by LibreWolf
  • Fennec
    • no repo
  • Waterfox
  • Vanadium
  • iceraven
    • most stars
    • https://lemmy.world/u/[email protected] - As far as I know ironfox supports any extensions normal firefox mobile does, but neither give you access to the full full extensions store. Iceraven is the only mobile browser I know of that lets you use all the extensions that you can on desktop firefox.
  • bromite
    • no longer maintained
    • Bromite has a fingerprint randomization and Vanadium doesn't. But Vanadium has better security if you use Graphene. So yeah, for privacy Bromite might be better
  • cromite
    • Bromite fork
  • brave
    • controversial
  • duckduckgo

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.

EDIT: in terms of popularity, privacy and functionality I guess the best choices are iceraven (based on firefox) as it has most stars on github and cromite (based on chromium) as brave is controversial


Solved Questions

I know that Brave is a bit controversial, but If Brave does something behind our backs wouldn’t we be able to know it since all the source code is out there? If it has some features we don’t like can’t we simply modify the source code?

@slackness

re: open source In theory: yes. In practice: maybe. It’ll probably eventually be caught by some researcher but unlike popular belief all open source code bases are not constantly being audited by the community. A random person can’t just read Brave source code for all platforms and accurately gauge if they’re doing something nefarious. It is very easy to hide stuff in code or misuse a protocol for evil purposes, etc.

You can modify the source code but as evident by the fact that there’s no Brave fork with crypto removed (there was one but their branding was too similar to Brave’s so they got sued), it’s not an easy feat to maintain that.


few questions

  • What is the difference between IronFox, Fennec, Waterfox and iceraven?

As far as I know ironfox supports any extensions normal firefox mobile does, but neither give you access to the full full extensions store. Iceraven is the only mobile browser I know of that lets you use all the extensions that you can on desktop firefox.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (7 children)

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

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 week ago (4 children)

See also:

Firefox-based

Chromium-based

WebView-based

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (12 children)

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).

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago

Huh, I didn't know that. I wonder if any of the rest have implemented that since...

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago

Thanks a lot!

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Fennec development has not stop, why do you think that's the case? The github repo shows it's on the current firefox build.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

I'm a bit confused. Its name has changed to Fenix?

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 week ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago

Much appreciated!

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Probably also Mullvad Browser and Tor Browser, but I don't know them much

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago

Vanadium

I don't think you can install it outside of GrapheneOS though

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Can you drop a github link for Fennec pls?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago (1 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago (6 children)

Sincere thanks! but it seems IceRaven is better, I guess im going to go with that

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[–] [email protected] -1 points 1 week ago (7 children)

Define privacy, because all of these browsers report each URL you visit to the operating system.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago (1 children)

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?

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