It uses the Android webview to render websites
So, Chrome-based.
this post was submitted on 28 Aug 2025
-16 points (37.5% liked)
Privacy
42733 readers
1084 users here now
A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.
Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.
In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.
Some Rules
- Posting a link to a website containing tracking isn't great, if contents of the website are behind a paywall maybe copy them into the post
- Don't promote proprietary software
- Try to keep things on topic
- If you have a question, please try searching for previous discussions, maybe it has already been answered
- Reposts are fine, but should have at least a couple of weeks in between so that the post can reach a new audience
- Be nice :)
Related communities
much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)
founded 6 years ago
MODERATORS
Is android webview literally using chromes engine?
Yes. It is called blink
Damn so OP lied
I put a warning in the post. I am disapponted too. Sorry. 8 months. Fuck.
That's harsh. I think there is a meaningful distinction between lying and being ignorant or misinformed.
Yes.
It uses Android Web view which is essentially just Chrome without the interface, and is entirely proprietary. It suffers from all the drawbacks of Chrome based browsers with the added problem of being an Android component so out of much, if any, control of the developers.
This app should not be a serious consideration for anyone who is privacy or security focused. The very first thing a secure browser should be providing is it's own rendering engine. Even providing it's own chrome based rendering engine would be more secure than this.
Also in terms of extensions, as it is Chrome based it's extensions such as uBlock will have the same privacy breaking restrictions as the rest of the chrome ecosystem with manifest v3 which favours Google's advertising business over user security and privacy.
I think it's possible for a Chrome-based browser to have better ad-blocking than Google Chrome
https://www.spacebar.news/stop-using-brave-browser/ is something I agree with, but Brave does have better ad-blocking features than Google Chrome, despite using the same core engine
Holy crap. This is disappointing. I should consider editing the post so people know.
Uses AdBlock not Ublock Origin...
Ty but I am fine with IronFox
I use NextDNS so none of that shows up anyway. Or at least I can not recall it.
"Not chrome" ... uses blink engine...
Now I know why nobody talks about it. I am just figuring out if it is still bad or do I need to make a switch immediately. I have tried as hard ad I can to get away from Google. They are like cancer.
The only thing I find bad about using blink is that it gives google more power over the consortium. Things are added as a standard when they are widely used, so if google disables jxl functionality, they kill any chance of that becoming the new standard. The bigger the market share of blink is, the more power google has over what other browsers prioritize also.
I tend to turn off JavaScript for most sites and I found enabling and disabling it on this browser to be a pain. Has that changed?
Also, it is webview, so you cannot harden it unless you root and download a hardened webview.
Not for me, but since I have discovered it is based on Android View and therefore Chrome, I feel dumb and am trying to find something else.
~~Can you use ublock?~~ built in. Im going to give it a go.
Since it's actually chrome based in most cases, I guess unlock won't work