Hi folks,

I created yet another Chromium spin-off called Inox (a synonym for stainless steel).

Inox goal is to provide a minimal chromium based browser with focus on privacy by disabling data transmission to google.

This is not a whole fork, but a set of patches applied on the arch chromium package. I do not want to create a whole fork to keep things as close as possible to Chromium.

At this state Inox and Chromium can't run in parallel, but they share the same Chromium user profiles.

Source code and a pre-built binary are available on AUR.

Links: github | source | binary

Screenshots: http://imgur.com/a/IUfqm

Edit 04.12.2015: The feature list below is not up to date, view the github page instead.

The following features are already available:

based on patches:

Disabled Google's Instant Extended API, this has the effect that the old "New Tab" is in place. (See disable-instant-extended-api.patch)

DuckDuckGo as default search engine. (See add-duckduckgo-seaarch-engine.patch)

Disabled AutoFill data transmission (See disable-autofill-download-manager.patch)

All Browser Extensions are now visible (See modify-default-prefs.patch)

Enabled user-modification for ALL extensions (See disable-default-extensions.patch)

Removed following default extensions: (See disable-default-extensions.patch)

-> Hotword (incl. Shared Module)

-> Google Now

-> Google Feedback

-> Cloud Print

-> Google Webstore

-> Network Speech synthesis

-> Google Hangout

Disabled URLTracker data transmission. I know this class has a bad naming, but nevertheless it connects to Google. (See disable-google-url-tracker.patch)

Disabled promo-notification fetching (See disable-notification-promo-fetch.patch)

Disabled ipv6 probes to google servers (See disable-google-ipv6-probes.patch)

Disabled Google Cloud Messaging status check (See disable-gcm-status-check.patch)

Modified default settings: (See modify-default-prefs.patch)

-> DefaultCookiesSetting: CONTENT_SETTING_SESSION_ONLY

-> EnableHyperLinkAuditing: false

-> CloudPrintSubmitEnabled: false

-> NetworkPredictionEnabled: false

-> BackgroundModeEnabled: false

-> BlockThirdPartyCookies: true

-> AlternateErrorPagesEnabled: false

-> SearchSuggestEnabled: false

-> AutofillEnabled: false

-> "Send feedback" checkbox if user triggers settings-reset: false

-> BuiltInDnsClientEnabled: false

-> SignInPromoUserSkipped: true

-> SignInPromoShowOnFirstRunAllowed: false

-> ShowAppsShortcutInBookmarkBar: false

-> ShowBookmarkBar: true

-> PromptForDownload: true

-> SafeBrowsingEnabled: false

-> EnableTranslate: false

based on build flags:

Disabled google now: enable_google_now=0

Disabled WebRTC: enable_webrtc=0

Disabled Remote service: emable_remoting=0

Disabled safe browsing: safe_browsing_mode=0

Disabled RLZ Identifier: enable_rlz=0

Disabled google hangouts: enable_hangout_services_extension=0

Disabled wifi bootstrapping: enable_wifi_bootstrapping=0

Disabled speech input: enable_speech_input=0

Disabled pre backups on sync: enable_pre_sync_backup=0

Disabled print preview: enable_print_preview=0

Disabled Chrome build: google_chrome_build=0

How to install extensions from Google WebStore?

Since there is no WebStore plugin, you cannot install extensions directly from the store, but there exists a workaround to download and install any extension manually.

https://clients2.google.com/service/update2/crx?response=redirect&prodversion=38.0&x=id%3D[EXTENSION_ID]%26installsource%3Dondemand%26uc

To download a extension just replace [EXTENSION_ID] with the extension-id from the WebStore.

To install it, just drag and drop the downloaded file into a chrome://extensions/ tab.

Thanks to the guys from Iridium Browser for pushing in the right direction.

I hope someone find it useful and I'd be happy to hear about your thoughts and feature requests. (issue tracker follows)

Edit:

Spelling, Title, changed URL to AUR4

Edit2:

I finally managed to push the package to AUR4. I had to force SSH to use IPv4

The default profile is now in ~/.config/inox instead of ~/.config/chromium (See branding.patch). This means Inox and Chromium are able to run in parallel.

I also removed the Google API key, Client Id and Client Secret

Edit3:

Added link to binary version. (See links)

Added link to github

Michael

Last edited by gcarq (2016-01-25 20:49:34)