Chromium fork named after radioactive element No. 90. Windows and MacOS/Raspi/Android/Special builds are in different repositories, links are towards the top of the README.md.
BSD-3-CLAUSE License
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M124
libffmpeg
library.chrome://flags#side-panel-journeys
chrome://flags#show-component-extension-options
. I did this because I was getting too many issues with people wondering what they are, why they couldn't be removed, and if they were a security concern. These extensions are built in to every Chromium browser. Disabling them would remove support for the Web Store, viewing PDFs, and integrating with Google Hangouts. I added a patch from UnGoogled Chromium a while back to un-hide them, but it has led to more confusion than it is worth. Since most people don't care, they are now hidden again, but the flag is for people who want to inspect or debug them, or just want the transparency of showing all extensions that are loaded in the browser.chrome://flags/#chrome-refresh-2023
and chrome://flags/#customize-chrome-side-panel
flags as mentioned in the M123 release, it still won't actually work unless you also pass the --disable-features=CustomizeChromeSidePanelNoChromeRefresh2023
flag. Since I didn't catch this until afterward, there is no GUI flag available on the chrome://flags page. You will need to specify it manually on the commandline, either from the terminal, or to make it permanent, by editing the shortcut (on Windows), or editing /usr/bin/thorium-browser (on Linux). Next release will fix this.--disable-thorium-dns-config
flag on the commandline, Thorium will use the default Chromium DNS configuration. You can make it permanent using the same steps as above. I will also make this a GUI flag in the next release.ftp://
URLs back in 2021. This has always annoyed me, because alot of ftp servers are still around, and alot of old software is only downloadable from ftp servers. In addition, tools like wget and curl wont download from them by default. This made it really convoluted to download files from an ftp website, usually making the user have to download a third party app. FTP means "File Transfer Protocol", and it was used heavily on the web for serving download directories to people (Microsoft used to host updates on an ftp site, for example). Learn more about it Here. It is enabled by default, but can also be disabled by the restored flag chrome://flags/#enable-ftp
. There are two minor bugs though. First, favicons don't work, so when you are on an ftp site, the tab will show the "dino" icon usually used when a site is not reachable. Second, directly clicking links doesn't work, and will instead land you on an "about:blank#blocked" page. To go to an ftp site, right click the link, and select "Copy link address", and then open a new tab, paste the link in the address bar, and press enter. I hope to resolve these in the next version. This makes Thorium the only modern browser that supports FTP anymore. Thorium also now registers as an FTP URL handler with the OS, but I have not tested if opening an ftp url in an external app will cause Thorium to open it correctly, or land you on that "about:blank#blocked" page. Feedback is requested. Thanks to @win32ss for modernizing some of the code, since obviously stuff has changed alot in the Chromium repo since 2021. I took his patches, and adapted/fixed them to work on the M124 Chromium revision(s).NOTE: Ubuntu 24.04 and Debian Sid are having issues with Chromium based stuff (including Electron), due to the sandbox (the chrome-sandbox
binary). The .deb and .rpm should work, however, you will probably get a crash if you are using the portable .zip or .appimage on these OS versions. A workaround is to use the --no-sandbox
flag, but this decreases security. See other potential workarounds Here. There is active work to fix this on the Ubuntu bug tracker. > https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/apparmor/+bug/2046844
Published by Alex313031 6 months ago
Fixes https://github.com/Alex313031/thorium/issues/659
Published by Alex313031 6 months ago
M123
chrome://flags/#chrome-refresh-2023
& chrome://flags/#customize-chrome-side-panel
chrome://flags/#disable-thorium-icons
flag). > https://github.com/Alex313031/thorium/commit/ec8b741ecf60bf1cfc6e44428afb20764109430a
thorium_policy_templates.zip
file. > https://github.com/Alex313031/thorium/commit/dcf4dd9848eb2a3041896d00eec135d3281d17ec
--enable-logging --v=1 >> /place/where/you/want/debug.log
. The top of the logfile will print the Thorium brand name and version, and under that is my little memorial code. > https://github.com/Alex313031/thorium/commit/8c0850e25eb5946e33dbe400ce279630cfda87e7
disable-encryption
flag not working properly (for users of the portable .zips) > https://github.com/Alex313031/thorium/commit/1ac0e00cbca58628e4e24c779dddd65569c158b8 This should fix issues where Thorium signs you out of sites on every restart.Big news! On top of Thorium continuing to support Windows 7/8/8.1 (which I have been doing for a while now, since M110), Thorium now supports Windows XP and Windows Vista! I made a page dedicated to it, with an XP style theme similar to the Win7 page > https://thorium.rocks/xp/.
Download releases for all these Pre-Windows 10 OSes here > https://github.com/Alex313031/thorium-legacy/releases
This also means that Thorium now supports more OSes and architectures than ANY other browser on the market!. Windows XP - 11 x32, x64, and arm64. MacOS x64 and arm64. Linux x64 and Raspberry Pi arm64. And Android arm32, arm64, and x86.
Thanks to @gz83 for helping with Windows builds + policy templates, and @win32ss for providing the baseline patches used to restore Windows XP/Vista support.
UPDATE: There are issues with Chromium and stuff based on it like Electron on Ubuntu 24.04 or Debian Unstable (Sid). You may have to run Thorium or Electron apps with the --no-sandbox
flag until it is resolved upstream. Please note that this does decrease security.
Published by Alex313031 7 months ago
Nothing too special this release, just your standard Chromium upgrade.
However, five things:
chrome://flags/#autoplay-policy
Fixes https://github.com/Alex313031/thorium/issues/577, https://github.com/Alex313031/thorium/issues/564, https://github.com/Alex313031/thorium/issues/596, https://github.com/Alex313031/thorium/issues/586, https://github.com/Alex313031/thorium/issues/570, https://github.com/Alex313031/Thorium-MacOS/issues/45, https://github.com/Alex313031/thorium/issues/575, https://github.com/Alex313031/thorium/issues/572, https://github.com/Alex313031/thorium/issues/599, https://github.com/Alex313031/Thorium-Win/issues/176, https://github.com/Alex313031/Thorium-Win/issues/169, and https://github.com/Alex313031/Thorium-MacOS/issues/42
Note: In case some people are confused, the ones with just "_amd64" or "_x64" at the end are the normal AVX releases. I don't name them with "AVX" at the end to keep the naming scheme the same as before I conglomerated the AVX2 and SSE3 repos, AND because we need it named this way for the deb repo. Again, as per last release, and I'm noting it again this release, if the deb repo suddenly stopped working for you, it's because we moved to a new server. Follow the new instructions on the site > https://thorium.rocks/#installation (which simply deletes the old thorium.list if it exists in /etc/apt/sources.list.d/ and re-downloads the new one).
Published by Alex313031 8 months ago
M121 Thorium's 30th version birthday!
libhighway
to 1.0.7, and libjxl
to 0.9.2. This should hopefully fix the JPEG-XL HDR issues some people reported. Should fix https://github.com/Alex313031/thorium-libjxl/issues/18
kResponsiveToolbar
. This makes it where when the window size is too small to hold both the tabstrip and top bar buttons (for example if you have alot of pinned extensions), the top bar buttons will be moved to a little chevron overflow menu.chrome://flags/#gtk-version
which allows you to set the GTK version (3 or 4), without having to use the command line. Use 4 for example on Arch Linux or the latest Ubuntu 24.04 Beta, which default to using GTK4 Libraries. Setting this appropriately can theme the browser and dialogs better to match the system theme. Setting it wrong or not setting at all won't cause bugs or problems, it's just a nice to have.chrome://settings/content/sound
chrome://flags/#vaapi-on-nvidia-gpus
NOTE: Do not set this flag if chrome://flags/#enable-global-vaapi-lock
is also enabled, you will put Thorium into an endless crash loop.chrome://flags/#disable-thorium-icons
. Rejoice! as I know many people don't like that I added blue and green colors to those. Note that icons used in the menus and settings still have blue colored triangles. I'm not gonna change those, as it's too much work and most people don't care about those. Fixes https://github.com/Alex313031/thorium/issues/307 and https://github.com/Alex313031/thorium/issues/66
_LIBCPP_HARDENING_MODE = _LIBCPP_HARDENING_MODE_FAST
, which hardens C++ code against flow integrity issues and memory overflows, while still keeping stuff fast compared to = 1
chrome://whats-new
page after I accidentally disabled it in M117.chrome://flags/#disable-download-bubble
, so if you changed this to restore the old download shelf, you will need to set it again.IMPORTANT: For those of you using the deb repo, we migrated to a new server and thus the old thorium.list won't work. Please follow the new instructions on the website (all it does is delete the old thorium.list if it exists, and re-downloads the new one). > https://thorium.rocks/#installation
Published by Alex313031 9 months ago
M120
chrome://flags/#vaapi-video-decode-linux-gl
to toggle using the GL backend for VAAPI acceleration (Linux only). Fixes https://github.com/Alex313031/thorium/issues/162
chrome://flags/#close-window-with-last-tab
which allows you to keep the application open when closing the last tab (i.e. closing the last tab will simply open a new blank one). Fixes https://github.com/Alex313031/thorium/issues/338
chrome://flags/#allow-insecure-downloads
to fix the annoying issue where Thorium won't download files if they come from http:// ftp:// or "mixed origins" i.e. an http:// download initiated by an https:// page. Fixes https://github.com/Alex313031/thorium/issues/509
Note: AVX .rpm build failed...sorry. I'm investigating. You can use the zip to copy the new Thorium version over /opt/chromium.org/thorium, or use the .AppImage for now.
Published by Alex313031 10 months ago
M119 (M118 was too old, so skipped that version)
chrome://flags#disable-aero
This disables transparency effects and GPU accelerated window frame compositing (while still leaving GPU acceleration for the actual web contents intact). It is useful if you dislike transparency, or are getting glitches on Windows 11 with the window frame.chrome://flags/#storage-access-api
flag I added to enable it.chrome://flags#download-bubble
chrome://flags#tab-hover-cards
Allows removing tab hover card images, and instead replace with a tooltip (the behavior before M106).Published by Alex313031 about 1 year ago
--enable-blink-features=MiddleClickAutoscroll
(and I removed the warning bar for people who do). Fixes > https://github.com/Alex313031/thorium/issues/199
Published by Alex313031 about 1 year ago
M116
chrome://whats-new
page has been re-enabled by me, after Google made it "Chrome only". You will see it launch in a new tab on every version upgrade.initial_preferences
file is now included in the Windows installer, to show the Welcome page on first launch after the first install.Thanks @gz83 @ltguillaume for helping.
Also, on another note, people have been complaining about me not releasing a new version on the exact same day as a new major Chromium version. To those people, I say, every major version takes me about 6+ Hours of intensive work to rebase. This is followed by many more hours for both me and @gz83 and @midzer to build each version, and this is assuming we are using all of our CPU cores pegged at 100% usage, which also slows our machines to a crawl for if we want to do anything else. Please be patient. If people still make issues or discussions about this, my response will be going forward: Then you try maintaining a Chromium fork!
[UPDATE] Look at this cool comparison a guy made, showing Thorium coming out on top in terms of performance when compared with other browsers! One thing I don't like about his methodology though, is that he also includes Safari on an iPad. iPad and desktop are not really comparable, giving the iPad a disadvantage, but also, since Apple ties their hardware and software together so tightly, they may get an advantage by being able to optimize safari specific to each ipad model in a way that is impossible with traditional desktop software that will run on a variety of machines.
Published by Alex313031 about 1 year ago
M115 : This release is all about bug fixes, rather than new features.
Might also fix other strange tabstrip bugs that people experienced in M114.
Next release we are planning to update libjxl and add a "Close tabs to the right" menu item.
Published by Alex313031 over 1 year ago
Published by Alex313031 over 1 year ago
CHROME_EXTRA_FLAGS
environment variable. For example:export CHROME_EXTRA_FLAGS="--no-sandbox"
and then running thorium-browser
from the same shell, will append --no-sandbox. You could set this in your ~/.bashrc or /etc/profile However, keep in mind that Thorium already also has a custom way to set default flags, by making/editing ~/.config/thorium-flags.conf
enable_media_foundation_widevine_cdm = true
args.gn flag (should hopefully fix https://github.com/Alex313031/Thorium-Win/issues/48 and https://github.com/Alex313031/Thorium-AVX2/issues/84)sudo rpm --install --nodeps file.rpm
because it tries to install libffmpeg.so.I am also working on a Flatpak, but I don't think I'm ever going to publicly release a snap of Thorium, because the performance is egregious, and I disagree with the walled garden practices that Canonical takes with snapcraft.
I would like help making the Flatpak, so if anyone out there knows about flatpak/flathub, don't hesitate to contact me, start a discussion, or submit a pull request.
Published by Alex313031 over 1 year ago
113 brings better support for WebGPU, and enables it by default. You can test it on my site here > https://thorium.rocks/misc/webgpu-test/ There are still some bugs with Nvidia GPUs on Linux. M114 seems to fix this. If you want to force WebGPU on, you can enable the chrome://flags/#enable-unsafe-webgpu
flag. (I disabled the warning infobar with this flag since I use it alot, but know that by enabling it, malicious processes could potentially extract frames from GPU memory)
It also brings the new Performance pane in settings, to enable memory saver > chrome://settings/performance
This allows Thorium to sleep tabs in the background. Edge users will be familiar with this feature.
I had to remove HEVC/H.265 and AC3 support temporarily. M114 will have it back again, so stay on M112 if you need this. This is because the guy who makes the patch skipped M113, and HEVC support is a prerequisite for my custom AC3 patch. I could manually patch ffmpeg by looking at how the M112 patch was formatted. But thats alot of files, more than Thorium as a whole even uses. Sooooooo....Sorry....LoL. Like I said, use 112 or wait until 114 if you wanna watch H.265 videos or AC3 audio.
4 new flags:
Two features I had previously enabled by default were removed upstream. I re-added them, but this time I put them behind two new flags > chrome://flags/#tab-outlines-in-low-contrast-themes
and chrome://flags/#prominent-dark-mode-active-tab-title
. They are disabled by default, and so in dark mode/incognito mode you will see a reversion back to the stock Chromium tabstrip theme. If you want the old behavior and look that Thorium has had since M100, simply enable these flags. Putting them behind flags was partially in response to this issue.
Then, the other two are flags from UnGoogled, one of which I modified.
chrome://flags/#scroll-tabs
The default behavior on Linux is to have this on. On other platforms you had to use a cmdline flag. Now, you can control it through the UI for ALL platforms (even Android). This is different from the scrollable tabstrip flag here > chrome://flags/#scrollable-tabstrip which moves the entire tabstrip. The one I added simply changes which tab is active (which I think is more useful).chrome://flags/#keep-all-history
This is the one I modified. Chromium by default only keeps history for 90 days. I raised this to 120 days. By enabling this flag, it will keep history forever. Note that this could cause your user profile dir to grow up to its maximum allowed of 2GB, if you were to enable this flag and then browse for ~many months, etc.Also I am proud to finally announce a new ThoriumOS release. Updated many packages, it uses Thorium 113, and it has Google Drive support and NVidia GPU support!! Get it here > https://github.com/Alex313031/ThoriumOS/releases/tag/V113.0.5672.177
Published by Alex313031 over 1 year ago
M112
M112 versions newer than 112.0.5615.137 fix important security vulnerabilities. See > CVE-2023-2136 and CVE-2023-2135
– Enabled AC3 for MacOS
– More compiler optimizations thanks to @RobRich999 See > https://github.com/Alex313031/thorium/commit/18ef7450f3675a2ec3aaba54b6b1ea8b215003cb
– Added LLD Tail Merging for Windows
– Added some new keyboard shortcuts:
"Ctrl+Shift+Q"
to close all windows (exit)"Ctrl+Shift+K"
to open a new tab to the right"Ctrl+Shift+D"
to duplicate the current tab"Ctrl+Shift+P"
to pop out the current tab into a new windowAlso includes Thorium UI Debug Shell, since I haven't made a build of that in a while.
IMPORTANT - You should sudo apt remove thorium-browser-unstable
if you are on M110 or earlier, before installing this, as the package name has changed from "thorium-browser-unstable", to just "thorium-browser". This will not affect your user data (even with apt purge)
Published by Alex313031 over 1 year ago
M111
– Added two new flags:
chrome://flags/#media-router
to enable/disable the media router, i.e. for Cast.chrome://flags/#close-confirmation
modified from an ungoogled flag. Prompts the user before closing browser window(s) if enabled. Options are 'last window' and 'multiple windows'– Pre-compiling of inline scripts enabled
– Added "Ctrl+Shift+Q"
keyboard shortcut to close all windows.
– Added snap support
IMPORTANT - You should sudo apt remove thorium-browser-unstable
before installing this, as the package name has changed from "thorium-browser-unstable", to just thorium-browser
. This will not affect your user data (even with apt purge)
Published by Alex313031 over 1 year ago
M110 is shaping up to be a great release!
Published by Alex313031 over 1 year ago
NOTE: Going forward, Thorium will be built to more stable versions. This one is based on M109 stable (see below), future versions will be based on the equivalent of "beta" or "dev" channel, rather than tip-o-tree, i.e. "canary" channel.
IMPORTANT Windows Users! M109 is the last version of Chromium for Windows 7, Windows 8, and Windows 8.1 😢 as per Here. I still use and enjoy Windows 7, and so have made a site for it here > https://thorium.rocks/win7 This is why this release is based on stable M109. Over at https://github.com/Alex313031/Thorium-Win I will be posting the special builds for Windows 7/8/8.1 there, and updating the links on my win7 page to link to these. Another deviation from standard Thorium releases, is that the windows 7 release will have a special 32 bit SSE2 build for old computers, on top of the SSE3, AVX, and AVX2 builds. There is also a small easter egg on the chrome://version page, to show love for one of Micro$oft's greatest OSes, back when that $ sign was a little smaller, lol.
M109 will also be getting maintenance releases for the Win7/8/8.1 version, tracking the official chrome stable versions as per https://chromiumdash.appspot.com/releases?platform=Windows and I will be attempting to backport patches from M110 into M109, as time and knowledge permits.
@gz83 @midzer
Published by Alex313031 over 1 year ago
DEPRECATED. RE-ADDED HEVC PATCH. USE RELEASE ABOVE
- M109 Maintenance release.
- HEVC patch removed (for now). If you still need HEVC, stay on the previous release.
- Icon updated for Linux and Windows, which removes the padding on the outside of the thorium logo to match
upstream change, the only effect is that the logo is slightly bigger.
- More LLVM optimization flags
- Removed the "unsupported OS" infobar banner for Win7/8/8.1 and Ubuntu 16.04, Debian 9, and Arch<2018.12
NOTE: Going forward, Thorium will be built to more stable versions. This one is based on M109 stable (see below), future versions will be based on the equivalent of "beta" or "dev" channel, rather than tip-o-tree, i.e. "canary" channel.
IMPORTANT Windows Users! M109 is the last version of Chromium for Windows 7, Windows 8, and Windows 8.1 😢 as per Here. I still use and enjoy Windows 7, and so have made a site for it here > https://thorium.rocks/win7 This is why this release is based on stable M109. Over at https://github.com/Alex313031/Thorium-Win I will be posting the special builds for Windows 7/8/8.1 there, and updating the links on my win7 page to link to these. Another deviation from standard Thorium releases, is that the windows 7 release will have a special 32 bit SSE2 build for old computers, on top of the SSE3, AVX, and AVX2 builds. There is also a small easter egg on the chrome://version page, to show love for one of Micro$oft's greatest OSes, back when that $ sign was a little smaller, lol.
M109 will also be getting maintenance releases for the Win7/8/8.1 version, tracking the official chrome stable versions as per https://chromiumdash.appspot.com/releases?platform=Windows and I will be attempting to backport patches from M110 into M109, as time and knowledge permits.
DEPRECATED. RE-ADDED HEVC PATCH. USE RELEASE ABOVE
Published by Alex313031 about 2 years ago
Published by Alex313031 about 2 years ago
For Windows users, Windows 7 support in Chromium is coming to an end. I have made a special page and will make special builds regarding this. > https://thorium.rocks/win7