helium

Helium is a web browser built for people who want privacy and a clean, no-extras browsing experience. It is based on Chromium (the open-source project that powers many popular browsers), but stripped down and modified with a privacy-first approach, including built-in ad-blocking that the README describes as "unbiased."

Unlike many browsers that bundle extra features, notifications, or telemetry, Helium aims to be lightweight — "no bloat and no noise" — and honest about what it does with your data. It comes with a custom fork of the uBlock Origin ad blocker baked in, and is itself fully open source, meaning anyone can inspect the code.

Helium is currently in beta (an early release phase where bugs may still appear) and is available for macOS, Linux, and Windows. You can download it from helium.computer, which automatically picks the right version for your system, or directly from GitHub. The project is built on top of ungoogled-chromium (a version of Chromium with Google-specific code removed), with additional patches pulled from other privacy-oriented browser projects.