Min: A fast, minimal browser that protects your privacy
minbrowser.org
minbrowser.org
How can it be possible for an Electron based browser to be faster / more efficient / battery-friendlier than the other mainstream ones?
Sounds like bullshit. We need to see some benchmarks.
Even if you have the simplest tab unloading strategy (like Tab suspender) built in, you'd beat Chrome. But, unloading tabs isn't a safe thing to do in web-standard browsers but fine in niche consumer ones.
Its not really word-smithing either, in all practical ways that matter to the end user, something like tab suspension makes it a much more efficient browser. Even if the JS/rendering (engine) bits are the same speed.
Although, to be fair, I'm not sure if Min does this, the chromium browser I made does.
Or is it private?
You will then have to restart Chrome and enable the feature in settings.
more details here: https://bgr.com/tech/how-to-use-chromes-new-energy-and-memor...
I've heard good things about this extension (but use at your own risk, I don't install extensions besides uBlock myself):
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/tab-suspender/fiab...
It’s Firefox with every privacy setting turned to max.
Warning: You are using Librewolf. Augment security posture with the appropriate countermeasures?
Yes | No | Continue | Abort | Cancel | Cancel with augmented security posture | Speak to elf
Here, let me tab-complete my pubkey so we can continue this discussion in private:
-----BEGIN OPENSSH PRIVATE KEY-----
b3BlbnNzaC1rZXktdjEAAAAABG5vbmUAAAAEbm9uZQAAAAAAAAABAAAAMwAAAAtzc2gtZW
QyNTUxOQAAACBGCHC9jhyIIOyoFx5PP9wpaRE/8jIksP+ET++fca82pQAAAKCSve3okr3t
6AAAAAtzc2gtZWQyNTUxOQAAACBGCHC9jhyIIOyoFx5PP9wpaRE/8jIksP+ET++fca82pQ
AAAEDbv7BsaZKNPQZSGeT8IBMb2z+lNCpTLZ7VXprw84XsZ0YIcL2OHIgg7KgXHk8/3Clp
ET/yMiSw/4RP759xrzalAAAAFnlvdXJfZW1haWxAZXhhbXBsZS5jb20BAgMEBQYH
-----END OPENSSH PRIVATE KEY-----One warning that will avoid you some frustration: Librewolf's default settings delete all browsing history when the browser is closed. If you're using it on a private device and want to keep your history, change the setting the first time you run it. It's in the same place as in regular Firefox, nothing special.
I just hope, this kind of paves the way for developers themselves to add features and capabilities.
Other browsers in this space - Polypane[0], Sizzy[1], Blisk[2]
[0]: https://polypane.app/ [1]: https://sizzy.co [2]: https://blisk.io
In this case it turns out to be built on Electron, which uses the Blink (Chrome's) rendering engine.
On the other hand, if you really like this browser, that may not matter. This week, I read about a new version of Firefox. So I closed it, and found out I had my browser running so long that Firefox needed to update twice.
But of course - it's still awesome, it's just not CLI.
But it's also common to use "CLI" to include "TUI" programs, so I don't think your parent is wrong.
It is indeed common, and (IMO) it is harmful, as TUI programs are just GUI programs in disguise. They do have two unique strengths: readily accessible over a serial console or an SSH session; and being the lowest common denominator of GUI programming. But they don't share any of the typical (desirable) qualities of CLI programs; typically, any CLI features (if present at all) are an afterthought.
$ ls | vim
Vim: Warning: Input is not from a terminalConnotatively, I have no concerns and won't revisit the comment, but will keep the distinction in mind when addressing a technical audience.
vim | ls
lynx -useragent="Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Googlebot/2.1; +http://www.google.com/bot.html)" -head -dump http://www.example.com/
I should add a lynx/w3m useragent test to my site and display images in AAlib for text browsers, that'd be a funny easter-egg.
well there goes my weekend :) I didn't know this was possible, thank you
The other day I only had a 20W laptop charger, which I know is only enough to slow down battery discharge with FF; used Edge, and the battery actually charged significantly. Same experiences I had with Safari. I'll keep using Firefox, because it's good for the ecosystem, but when battery is an issue, I switch.
I suspect that for most people, it still has a way to go before it could be considered a daily driver, but the rate of progress is incredible and I’m sure it will get there.
It's beautiful, but I feel that chrome has a better beauty/functionality tradeoff. Some differences vs chrome I noted:
— no favicons
— no addressbar
— no skeuomorphic tabs
All these things make it look more beautiful and elegant then chrome, but less functional.
Favicons are ultra functional—when I'm looking for a tab most of the time I'm looking for the favicon, not the title. Otherwise, I'm moving my mouse to the rough area it I know that it is and having tabs that fill up as much of the width as possible kills this as I'm opening more and more tabs and they shrink exponentially.
And why no option to show the addressbar? I feel disoriented when I can't glance up and see where I am. The worst part is to see the addressbar, it hides the page, so you can never see the page and the addressbar together in context.
I was really excited about this browser but unfortunately those were all hard show-stoppers.
Are there browsers you can download only after login?
[1]. And I'm in fact typing this from within it.
Of course I never came through with the idea because well…look how much unpaid work goes into it.
As others have said, I don’t think Electron is well suited for anything to be resource friendly. I think it’s well suited for apps on machines that can afford to run Electron, not something as general purpose as a browser.
Writing a browser is very hard, but something done in reader mode is clearly more feasible. I wanted to marry FreeText with Gumbo, OpenGL and C++. Maybe even throw in a built in RSS reader that displays the stripped pages. but I have no idea how to get FreeText working with OpenGL.
I think if I could achieve this, I could get something that’s truly lightweight.
And this pretty much sums up why I hate todays internet.
Writing a telnet client was super easy. FTP, a little harder, but doable. Writing an SVG renderer using any canvas like tech (Cairo, canvas, CoreGraphics) is moderate, but again pretty doable. The fact that the w3c has churned out spec after spec that layers more and more complexity on something that was supposed to be a document viewer with links and such that we find ourselves in a position where advancing the state of the art requires a small nations state worth of resources, just to come current, is profoundly depressing.
The web is far too bloated, but it’s been consumer centric for a long time, this was only expected. It’s not just an HTTP document viewer, it’s a pop up tabloid viewer…
It seems quite unfortunate that such large programs are required to handle current web standards. Anything useful could be expressed as text in plain old html, but then, all the bloat needs to be there to pay the bills I guess.
https://www.electronjs.org/docs/latest/tutorial/security#iso...
I had these issues and suggestions:
- Set min to dark mode, but it made no difference. Restarted to no avail.
- Set all ads to be blocked, still saw a lot of ads on reddit, youtube, others.
- Design wise, I think the app should default to having borders between tabs.
- There should be more white space at the top to drag the window around. The app opened maximized and when I went to drag it on windows I could only click the the URL bar because there is only a little bit of padding inbetween it and the top of the window.
- I have a large monitor and the when you click on the url bar when you have multiple tabs open, it expands to the full window width so the text you were looking at moves all the way to the left, very nitpicky I know, but I think this is not a great design choice and maybe the text should stay where it is when changing sites.
Unfortunately this is just a regular browser with "minimal" only meaning practically no UI.
Besides that, I really enjoy the surge of browsers in last few years, we got orion, min, arc and I guess few more I missed
Then folks could "plug them in" as libraries to their app / custom browser, and go to town adding all the custom ad and spyware or privacy and freedum preserving defenses they like.
Surely a committed group of open sourcers on GitHub could achieve this.
Min – A smarter web browser - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15429286 - Oct 2017 (72 comments)
Show HN: Min – web browser with better search and built-in ad blocking - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11484770 - April 2016 (91 comments)
One can only wonder what these alternatives do when they claim to be minimal and fast and worse, private. Can there really be privacy without security?
I get the security stance, but I configure a LOT of networking hardware via WebUI (eg: Palo Alto firewalls - self-signed from the factory) and this makes it next to useless.
Is that a feature of the underlying browser engine or an addon? I've wanted that for years but maybe not enough to fiddle with an entirely new browser app.
I love Lynx, too. I connect my retro computers to the internet through my Mac. Unfortunately, Lynx has bugs that you can't see on modern machines that show up on old, low speed connections.
For example, when connecting to a web site, it displays a whole bunch of connection status information that I just don't care about. Enough that it's intrusive.
Connecting to this web site, it displays ALL of the following:
Getting https://news.ycombinator.com/
Looking up news.ycombinator.com
Making HTTPS connection to news.ycombinator.com
SSL callback:ok, preverify_ok=1, ssl_okay=0
Verified connection to news.ycombinator.com (cert=news.ycombinator.com)
Certificate issued by: /C=US/O=DigiCert Inc/CN=DigiCert TLS RSA SHA256 2020 CA1
Secure 256-bit TLSv1.2 (ECDHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384) HTTP connection
HTTP request.
HTTP request sent; waiting for response.
Read 1.5 KiB of data, 5.3 KiB/sec.
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
I've tried every Lynx flag and configuration listed, and none of them actually work. I think the notification suppression feature broke, but nobody noticed it because we've grown accustomed to high speed connections.
Sorry, but with the malware threat level being what it is, getting the app signatures right is table stakes.
It's Chromium under the hood. No thanks.
theres also another extension that i cant think of the name. it adds the url to the title of the window so that keepass/autotype can detect what site it is.
i have a few other extensions but i would be willing to forego them if the browser was that good
Or is Electron updates as frequently?
Anyway, use firefox or librewolf. Stop enabling the chromium monopoly!
Flagging that the phrase "this should be a fork of Chromium, not Electron" is ambiguous between "this shouldn't be a fork of Electron" and "this shouldn't be Electron".
Fair enough point. One reason it's Electron, I assume, is that it's much easier for typical developers to build than forking Chromium. I've been there. I've hacked at building a touchless-controlled browser that uses hand gesture and speech recognition to interact with the web. I can cobble something basic together in Electron, but it's much more intensive to get off the ground forking Chromium (though you're right the native tabs and useful parts would be helpful).
> without the security issues that Electron exposes.
Another reasonable point. For reference, here's an overview of security from Electron itself.[1] Security issues are one reason I haven't pursued the touchless browser more actively. I don't know if it's a dealbreaker, but it's not my area of expertise and I'd need to get seriously up to speed before releasing anything.
From a glance, it does look like Min is trying to follow good security practices, such as having BrowserView webPreferences default to "nodeIntegration: false", "contextIsolation: true", etc.[2] And in the issues the maintainers seem aware of security issues, eg:
> Making internal pages have the same privileges as the browser UI would be nice, although it's kind of difficult to implement. You could add nodeintegration to the webview tag, but I think there's a pretty big risk of accidentaly loading a regular webpage with nodeintegration enabled if we do that, which would be bad.[3]
Ideally there wouldn't be such a large Chromium (and Chromium-based) monopoly on browsers, but overall I'm still glad to see projects like this trying to create different UI options.
[1] https://www.electronjs.org/docs/latest/tutorial/security
[2] https://github.com/minbrowser/min/blob/7aba03fb645334366f9ec...
[3] https://github.com/minbrowser/min/issues/554#issuecomment-38...
Today browsers are one of the most important pieces of security software on our machine. They have a huge surface area, act as a sandbox for gobs of untrusted code and many of us conduct our most sensitive work in them (online banking etc). I'd be hesitant to use any browser that doesn't have the team behind it to quickly manage threats and maintain high quality code.
You can do some neat stuff with userchrome in Firefox (not as an add-on) but it'll break after basically every update. There's no infrastructure in place to update the userchrome in sync with the browser, and Mozilla appears to be hostile towards the whole feature.
There are decent reasons for all of this, but it means the only way to experiment is to basically make your own app, as Min did.
https://github.com/black7375/Firefox-UI-Fix/wiki/Show-Off-Yo... https://github.com/black7375/Firefox-UI-Fix/pull/511
Or Safari of course, it's really a great browser if one's on the Mac.
The venerable iCab or new Orion from Kagi shows what's possible here.
Kagi's Orion runs Firefox and Chrome extensions, including on iOS, and of course works with Kagi search, which is enough better that it's worth switching from Google/Bing/DDG.
---
EDIT to add, on iCab, it's been updated as of 2020, which unfortunately finally dropped the legacy Macs, but does support modern filter lists:
iCab 6.0 (September, 28th 2020)
iCab 6.0 is completely rewritten, therefore there’re many new features and existing many old features have changed. The new release uses the newer modern web engine of the macOS which is much faster and smoother than the classic engine that was used by older iCab releases. It also supports more web technologies.
Because the modern web engine had too many limitations under macOS 10.12 and older, the minimum macOS release for the new version of iCab is therefore macOS 10.13. Older macOS releases are no longer supported. This has the advantage that iCab can now rely on many native macOS features which are only available in newer macOS releases.
iCab now uses the native „Tabs“ feature of the macOS, so the tabs in iCab will now behave just as the Tabs in all other Apps using the native Tabs feature (like Safari Mail, the Finder etc). All the capabilities of the macOS to manage tabs are fully available in iCab as well.
iCab is now using the native filter capabilities of the modern web engine of the macOS. Therefore the filter manager is completely new. The new filter manager supports the popular filter lists from AdBlock Plus, Easylist, uBlock and compatible. The filter manager window provides a few links to web sites where you can find these filter lists. using the „Add“ or „Subscribe“ links on these sites can directly import these filter lists, but you can also simply download these lists into a file and then use the „import“ feature of the Filter Manager to import these files.
iCab 6.0 supports syncing of tabs, bookmarks, reading list, filters and search engine via iCloud. The iCloud sync is compatible to iCab Mobile for the iOS platform, so you can now sync all this data between iCab for the Mac and iCab Mobile for the iOS as well.
The new web engine provides more control over audio and video playback. It is possible to immediately stop all audio and video playback with a certain menu command. But it can also make sure that audio and video playback only occurs on the active tab.
Modules of the module manager can be put into the status bar, so these modules are directly accessible very fast and comfortably.
The App supports private tabs which do not save any private data (Cookies, Caches etc). Private tabs are marked with a red border around the address field.
And much more
But highly unlikely to be better enough to justify paying a subscription for it (for most people, anyway), so it's always going to be confined to a small niche of users.
I'd argue if you live in first world, earn a living from tech, even if you don't care whether you pay for things vs. be tracked, it's worth the subscription, in the sense of, it's enough better to be worth paying for as a better tool, not just because there's no gaming of the SERPs above the fold. The Lenses are impressive, but it's not just that, the results are what one used to appreciate from web search. After getting used to the quality, the lower quality of Google or the Bing derivatives like DDG will frustrate you.
If you dislike adtech or value privacy, it's worth the subscription, because there are no ads and no tracking. (Also, unlike neeva, to which I also subscribe, it's not an ad-alternative model from former ad-tech people.)
Globally, I can easily see enough users sign up to sustain the small team. Their blog post [0] mentiones they calculate they need 25,000 subscribers to sustain themselves.
(I'm a paying customer, FWIW).
[0] https://blog.kagi.com/status-update-first-three-months#futur...
edit: Okay so it's webkit based, mac only, with built-in adblocking, which sounds nice, but honestly the idea that it can easily install extensions from both chrome and firefox sounds like a security nightmare to me.
The fact that the only mention of security in their FAQ is to conflate it with privacy
"Most browsers regularly "phone home" dozens or even hundreds times. Each request poses a security risk"
is a red flag IMHO
Full text for reference: "Each request poses a security risk, no matter what information it sends, by potentially exposing your IP address and your browser fingerprint. Telemetry can also inadvertently leak personally identifiable information or corporate intelligence."
In design terms, this is a wonderful, beautiful, laudable project in pursuit of a great purity of vision.
In security terms, this is an exercise in recklessness. It's irresponsible to even suggest that people should try using it.
This seems like a good start to understanding Electron security and why using it to do what the documentation expressly states is unwise might be less than optimal.
For a single specific example, look at the information on permissions and compare to how min handles them. I also see no functionality that attempts to determine if code is malicious or not. Chrome does have measures in it to do this.
That said, I need to be clear. The matter at hand is not a matter of mere configuration and cannot be addressed by better configuration of Electron. Chromium was designed and built to run in a very hostile context. Electron has been built to run in a much more trustworthy context. There is no amount of configuration that will turn the latter into the former because it is not purely a difference of configuration.
Electron's security model is not bad in any absolute sense. It's designed for a particular context and set of scenarios. Dropping it into a very different one with very different needs makes it a poor fit for the job at hand. You may as well descend into a volcano with a home stove potholder.
I hope this has clarified matters. I understand that some people will be very discouraged by the stance I have taken on this. I have no desire to crush their dreams, only to ensure they make good and wise decisions around security.
Electron RPC also makes it really easy to get RCE if you don't implement it properly, and most JavaScript developers don't implement it properly. Electron also does not have anywhere near as much security research into it.
If you want to read more into the current state of electron security research, see https://blog.electrovolt.io/
Amen to that, FF & the rest for the win!
https://www.zdnet.com/article/brave-browser-moves-to-chromiu...
I didn't know Brave was an Electron app
Let’s nip this in the bud. The comment you’re replying to says “Everyone is complaining it is built in electron” but I’ve read every comment in this so far tiny thread and there is literally one comment complaining of it being Electron.
> I didn't know Brave was an Electron app
But if what you need is an actual, literal web browser, then I’m not sure I see why this is a bad choice.
I understand that some may experience differences of opinion, but I regard it as sufficient warning when the developers of something warn that it should not be used as a web browser: https://www.electronjs.org/docs/latest/tutorial/security
I can definitely see now why this would be problematic.
Kudos for experimenting with minimalism!
But this is not the alternative to Firefox I've been looking for.
Electron uses Chromium. Which uses Blink, not WebKit.
If one could make a browser with Firefox's backend and instead render with Blink that would be pretty dope.
Gecko is Firefox's "backend" ...
If you'd like to learn more about how a web browser project would organize its internal architecture, but are discouraged by the complexity of Chromium, Firefox, etc. I'd recommend source diving Ladybird (https://github.com/SerenityOS/ladybird), NetSurf (https://www.netsurf-browser.org/), or Dillo (https://www.dillo.org/).
Maybe Servo can be rescued from oblivion? Get Mozilla to dump their activist-CEO (who is more concerned with her own remuneration and virtue signalling than with the development of their core product), use the funds thus saved to hire back all those developers which were let go under her reign and get Servo back on track. Blink is the one layout engine to rule them all after all...
Ash Blink durbatulûk
ash Blink gimbatul,
Ash Blink thrakatulûk
agh Google-ishi krimpatulI think you may have meant "flouted" there? Though sometimes flaunting a standard might also be a thing.
Except for the virtue signalling around crypto. :-)
Even Reddit on Firefox PC crashes occasionally (the whole site turns white while browsing). Reddit on FF on Android is barely browsable.
Here's how you can fix this all at once: https://old.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/g3tyfu/how_to_swit...
Google is intentionally breaking support for Firefox on their websites. Other just don't care and support monopolies.
Compared to her I rarely use my phone for browsing, I do not feel as impacted.
You can't do video calls with Teams in firefox for a really clear and obvious example, but I encounter breakages quite often and have to switch back to Chrome.
Safari suffers the same, but I get the impression people are testing safari more than Chrome.. but I hear so many complaints on hackernews about safari, I suspect at some point Chrome penetration will finally dislodge Safari on MacOS... or if MacOS market share goes down: then it's over and we have a total monopoly.
May I ask what you did to configure your browser that way (extensions/settings)? I like the look of it, and looking for ways to customize my setup.
Also, of course, you should install uBlock Origin.
uBlock Origin
Sidebery
QuickCut
SingleFile
Popup window
Firefox Multi-Account Containers
Copy All Tab UrlsPrivacy Badger
Duck Duck Go Privacy Essentials
Privacy Possum
Also, that's not a useful comparison because web browsers are basically operating systems now, with how complex they are. Not to mention that Windows XP was released over two decades ago. So, again, I'm not sure what your point is.
Safari was 40-something MiB installed a few macOS versions ago before parts of it were migrated out of the app to become protected system libraries. The reason the others you checked are of the same size is because they are forks of the same two browsers.
Add.: I just have to disagree with the notion that browsers are "basically" operating systems because of how complex they are. They really are not. Not by a longshot. Neither do they contain the fundamentals of an operating system, nor do they contain the upper reaches of them. We can pretend they are operating system facsimiles by doing a lot of impressive and fun stuff in JavaScript and WASM, but this isn't the same thing. The complexity of an operating system, even a simplified one, is of a completely different sort and depth. This comparison only fits the sarcastic intention people have when making the comparison - we can joke about it, because of how absurdly large and tangled browsers have become.
Exactly. What's the alternative? Safari is nice if you're on macOS/iOS but isn't available elsewhere. Every other browser that has any semblance of market share is a fork of Chromium and shares its size. So I'm not sure how Firefox is "overstuffed" but other browsers are not.
> The complexity of an operating system, even a simplified one, is of a completely different sort and depth.
I agree with this, and it's obviously an exaggeration, but I don't think it's an invalid comparison. The API surface area that browsers need to support is enormous, and they have even stricter backwards compatibility guarantees than most modern OSes. Any browser worth using is going to be pretty large simply because they're complex beasts.
warning: is for advanced users
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style-ta...
This is nice because you can take all your tabs for a research project, condense them to a group and then nap them until you come back to the project.
Oh yes I forgot TST doesn't have that since I haven't used it in so long. Keeping groups of unloaded tabs might not be healthy for me, enables my tab hoarding habit.
I did. But the Firefox UI is still very Windows-centric, and doesn't feel like a real Mac program at all.
But the big reason I don't use it is that you can't define how to switch from tab to tab.
Every program on my Mac from Safari to Nova to VS Codium to my database manager allows me to switch tabs with the standard macOS Keyboard Shortcuts settings. So I use the same keys to switch tabs in every program on my Mac. Which is part of the whole Mac experience — Things happening the same way between apps.
Even the Finder, and the DuckDuckGo browser allow this.
Not so with Firefox. The simple addition of "Show Next Tab" and "Show Previous Tab" in the drop-down menus would fix this. It's so simple. So elementary. So basic to every other Mac program I use that its absence in Firefox is glaring. I'm not going to rearrange the muscle memory I use all day every day for one program.