For people looking for a more vanilla experience I'm publishing Google's official extension supporting Chromium builds for Android here https://github.com/andrewginns/chromium-browser-snapshots-An...

Combined Obtainium it's easy to keep it updated. https://github.com/ImranR98/Obtainium

Do you have any plans to push it to F-Droid?

That would raise the value of that project quite a lot (at least for me, but I feel like there are others, thinking similarly).

Please, push it to F-Droid!

I've been digging into Vanadium's extension support implementation and this looks like a solid approach for Android. The key challenge we faced with WebExtensions on mobile was the memory footprint - each extension runs in its own process which can add 30-50MB of overhead per extension on resource-constrained devices.

Curious how you're handling the isolation/sandboxing model here? The standard Chrome approach of site isolation + process-per-extension becomes pretty heavy on mobile. Have you considered using a shared process model with context isolation instead? We found that careful use of V8 contexts could give similar security guarantees with ~70% less memory overhead, though it required some tricky IPC handling between the extensions and main browser process.

Also worth noting that the WebExtension manifest v3 transition adds some extra complexity for mobile browsers - particularly around the service worker lifecycle and background page limitations. Would love to hear how you're approaching that migration path.

Ah thought I saw a Helium browser mentioned recently on HN[0] and thought this was the same thing. So this is not the same as this Helium browser [1]?

[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45366867

[1]: https://helium.computer/

It would be really useful if we could sync bookmarks and history with Google's servers.

Some Chromium builds has that: https://chromium.woolyss.com/#google-api-keys

Great job on this release! I've been waiting for something like it since my favorite browser, Kiwi, stopped getting updates.

Without updates, many sites will likely stop working with it soon.

Kiwi had some great features, like disabling AMP mode, rearranging the Chrome Store for mobile, and customizable tab layouts, etc. These features might interest others as well.

This is really great work, but can you comment on whether or not any Google-based "safebrowsing", etc is still enabled in the code base?

Have you thought about merging your efforts with ungoogled-chromium (Android)?

There USED to be an ungoogled-chromium for Android (circa v88 chrome, the APK is still available for download) that also allowed extentions.

Fascinating, I use Firefox because on Android I can use extensions (for this https://plzat.me). This is a great alternative.

Edit: hard to find where to get this browser. Do I need to build it myself?

I've been looking for a Kiwi Browser replacement since it stopped updating. I'll check this out.

Curious how it compares to Brave browser on Android

this is great. I miss extensions in android browser. That existing extensions from web store would work out of the box is cherry on top.

Excellent, please make sure you push for financial support in your project.

Kiwi was a great browser but has since shutdown. Android needs something like Kiwi that also has a steady income to support itself in future.

Yet another Chromium clone, we should create a Distrowatch site for Chrome.