Helium

Helium is a privacy-focused, Chromium-based web browser that blocks ads, trackers, and fingerprinting by default, with no analytics, no bloat, and full open-source transparency.

Built on ungoogled-chromium and enhanced with privacy patches from Inox, Bromite, Brave, and Iridium, Helium removes Google services while preserving Chromium’s performance and compatibility. Its bundled fork of uBlock Origin is installed as a built-in browser component rather than a user extension, making it undetectable to adblocker-detection scripts and unbypassable by enterprise extension policies.

Helium includes multi-layered fingerprint resistance through coordinated canvas noise, audio noise, and hardware-concurrency spoofing — not isolated toggles, but a unified anti-fingerprinting system. Extension downloads are routed through Helium’s own anonymization proxy so Google never learns which extensions you install. Available for macOS, Linux, and Windows, with all web services open source and self-hostable.

What You Get

• Unbiased ad-blocking as a browser component - Helium’s fork of uBlock Origin is installed as a built-in Chromium component, not a user extension, making it undetectable by adblocker-detection scripts and impossible to disable via extension management.
• Zero telemetry and no first-launch web requests - Helium makes no network connections on startup, ensuring no data is sent to Google or any third party before you explicitly choose to browse.
• Multi-layered fingerprint resistance - Coordinated canvas noise, audio context noise, and hardware-concurrency spoofing work together to produce statistically indistinguishable browser profiles across sessions.
• Anonymized Chrome Web Store extension downloads - All extension installs are routed through Helium’s own proxy service so Google never sees which extensions you install or when.
• Native bangs search integration - Type !g, !yt, or other bangs directly in the address bar without any extension, implemented as a core browser feature.
• Vertical tabs and flexible layout system - Switch between horizontal tabs, vertical tabs (collapsible, left or right), and compact/zen layouts from the browser menu without restarting.
• Split view for side-by-side browsing - Open two pages simultaneously in a native split-view interface without needing extensions or separate windows.
• Full MV2 extension support preserved - Works with all existing Chromium extensions including legacy Manifest V2 extensions that Chrome has deprecated.

Common Use Cases

• Privacy-conscious daily browsing - Users who want a browser that blocks ads and tracking by default without configuring anything, and without trusting a company’s privacy promises.
• Developers testing without analytics interference - Developers who need a clean, untracked browser to test websites without Google Analytics, ad networks, or fingerprinting affecting their test sessions.
• Journalists and researchers handling sensitive topics - Users whose browsing must not be correlated across sessions, who need canvas and audio fingerprinting resistance alongside cookie blocking.
• Power users tired of browser bloat - Users who want Chromium’s engine and extension ecosystem without AI assistants, update nags, sign-in prompts, sponsored content, or telemetry.
• IT teams deploying privacy-compliant browsers - Organizations that need a fully open-source, self-hostable browser stack with no proprietary components or mandatory cloud accounts.

Under The Hood

Architecture Helium’s repository is a Chromium build-configuration system organized into cleanly separated domains: a patches directory grouped by vendor and feature area (helium/core, helium/ui, helium/settings, ungoogled-chromium, brave, bromite, and others), Python utility scripts for patch application and validation, and resource management tooling. Platform concerns — packaging, CI pipelines, build environments — are intentionally delegated to separate repositories for macOS, Linux, and Windows, keeping the core repo focused on shared patches and tooling. The central architectural decision to use quilt-managed unified diff patches applied atop Chromium’s source is a well-proven pattern for browser customization, and Helium extends it with a vendor-namespaced patch hierarchy that makes ownership and provenance explicit.

Tech Stack All automation, validation, and dependency management runs on Python 3 using the standard library alongside third-party libraries including unidiff for patch processing and schema for configuration validation. Chromium’s native GN build system is configured via flags.gn to disable Google APIs, telemetry, and proprietary services. Dependencies are declared in INI-format files with SHA-256 content verification. CI runs on Cirrus CI. The browser bundles Helium’s custom fork of uBlock Origin as a built-in Chromium component extension, pinned by content-addressed archive. An onboarding UI ships as a separately versioned web service, and all i18n strings are managed through a structured pipeline with per-language JSON files covering dozens of locales.

Code Quality The Python tooling layer has a proper test suite using pytest with coverage configured across both utils/ and devutils/ modules, exercising patch validation logic and domain substitution. Code follows consistent conventions with copyright headers, enum-based platform and extractor modeling, and custom exception classes for typed error handling. Pylint and yapf are integrated and enforced through dedicated runner scripts, indicating active code quality discipline. Patch files are organized in a well-defined series with strict naming and vendor grouping conventions. The project maintains dual license files to clearly distinguish Helium’s GPL-3.0 code from BSD-3-Clause heritage from ungoogled-chromium.

What Makes It Unique Helium’s most technically distinctive contribution is its coordinated fingerprint resistance system — canvas noise, audio context noise, and hardware-concurrency spoofing are implemented as a unified set of patches that work together rather than as independent toggles, producing more robust anonymization than adding them separately. The bundled uBlock Origin fork is installed as a Chromium component extension rather than a user extension, which means adblocker-detection JavaScript cannot detect it through the standard extension API and enterprise extension policies cannot target it. Extension downloads route through Helium’s own anonymization proxy rather than hitting Google’s Web Store directly. The native bangs implementation wires search shortcuts directly into Chromium’s omnibox without requiring an extension, and the browser imports profiles from Arc and Zen Browser in addition to standard Chrome and Firefox — unusually broad coverage for an ungoogled browser.

Self-Hosting

Helium is licensed under GPL-3.0 for all code, patches, and modifications that are unique to the project. Code inherited from ungoogled-chromium retains its original BSD 3-Clause license, and the repository includes both license files so the boundary is explicit. GPL-3.0 means you can use Helium commercially, modify it, and redistribute it — but if you distribute a modified version, you must make the source of your modifications available under the same license. For most organizations simply deploying Helium internally for employees, this obligation does not apply; it matters only if you ship a modified build to external users.

Running Helium yourself means managing the full Chromium build toolchain, which is substantial. The repository itself contains only patches, resources, and Python tooling — the actual browser binary is produced by the platform-specific repositories for macOS, Linux, and Windows, each of which has its own build environment documentation. You are responsible for tracking Chromium security releases and rebasing Helium’s patches against each new version, a task the Helium team currently handles at a cadence of roughly five releases per month. For organizations without a dedicated browser-engineering capability, this operational burden is the most significant barrier to self-hosting.

Helium has no commercial cloud tier, no paid support offering, and no enterprise licensing program as of this writing. There is no SLA, no managed upgrade path, and no official support channel beyond the public GitHub issue tracker. What you gain by running it yourself is complete control and verifiability — every component including the web services and onboarding flow is open source and can be audited or replaced. What you give up compared to a managed browser platform is automated security patching, professional support, and the assurance that someone else is watching for upstream vulnerabilities.