thorium

M124

• AC3/E-AC3 Audio support restored. It was disabled in the last couple of versions due to ffmpeg changes. Dolby Atmos audio is also restored. Note that for ARM/ARM64 builds, it is still disabled, due to incompatibilities with how Chromium loads the libffmpeg library.
• WebRTC (used for real-time communication like video chats, i.e. Zoom, for example) can now use H.265/HEVC (recent upstream Chromium feature) on devices without hardware decoding support (Thorium feature). This is good because H.265 compression means that you will have less stuttery streams if you are on a bandwidth limited connection.
• Fingerprinting protection patch added. Note this isn't a safety blanket, and doesn't mean Thorium will remove all types of fingerprint tracking it just makes it better than normal Chromium/Chrome. I would like to expand on this in the next version by adding a setting to enable the Global Privacy Control header, alongside the "Do Not Track" setting, which is also enabled by default in Thorium.
• Added flag to enable/disable Side Panel Journeys, which can be annoying. chrome://flags#side-panel-journeys
• Added flag to enable/disable showing the built in internal extensions that are normally hidden. They are now hidden by default (like in normal Chromium), but can be re-enabled with 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.
• The Side Panel Chrome Customization feature now works even if Chrome Refresh 2023 UI is disabled (Thorium has it disabled by default). However, fixing this this led to an unforeseen minor issue, that I didn't catch until everything was already built. Even if Chrome Refresh 2023 is enabled with the 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.
• The entire browser now respects Gamma/Alpha settings that the user has set for the display (Windows only for now). It is unknown how this will play with Thorium's JPEG-XL support. Feedback requested.
• New commandline flag to disable the custom Thorium DNS config. Normally, Thorium uses two patches, to make DNS queries more privacy respecting, and to use DNS over HTTPS (DoH) by default, which is more secure and can't be intercepted by "man in the middle" attackers. However, this was breaking some people's configurations, especially when they had manually set DNS options in the OS, or were using external third party apps that change DNS settings (like VPN services). So, if you pass the --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.
• 32 Bit Linux is now supported, however I am not going to be regularly building binaries. But it is at least supported at the source code level again. There is an M123 release available. Note that Ubuntu 16.04 is not supported.
• FTP support restored! Chromium and Firefox both removed all support for 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).
• I enabled a feature that is normally disabled, that allows you to configure more options for PWA (Progressive Web App) windows. See the settings while in a PWA to see the extra options.
• Global Media Controls (this little icon in the top bar > ) can be disabled again. I had enabled a feature that updates the UI on ChromiumOS/ThoriumOS, but it had the unforeseen effect of force-enabling it on other platforms.
• Major vulnerability CVE-2024-4671 is fixed in this version.

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

Fixes https://github.com/Alex313031/thorium/issues/659

• 32 Bit Linux build
• Update minor Chromium version to .134

M123

• Enabled WebSQL by default (for things like Session Buddy 3)
• More compiler optimizations in PGO (Linux-only for now) > https://github.com/Alex313031/thorium/commit/acf69ddd0fd1069fc39db86a8fee3644c5747c5a#diff-9b63dea0428a0efde7b9737c2b752678592868f64817cfbad4af4767d4bdfa84
• More compiler optimizations (well, actually the removal of some LLVM flags) > https://github.com/Alex313031/thorium/commit/c55c6b3e1ba9550b9c11700f929f51e8c57853a3
• Disabled the ugly "Chrome Refresh 2023" UI by default https://github.com/Alex313031/thorium/commit/ec8b741ecf60bf1cfc6e44428afb20764109430a however, if you decide you want it, set these two flags to true: chrome://flags/#chrome-refresh-2023 & chrome://flags/#customize-chrome-side-panel
• If Chrome 2023 Refresh UI is enabled, then I added updated icons for the top bar (colored by default like usual, but can be made grey with the chrome://flags/#disable-thorium-icons flag). > https://github.com/Alex313031/thorium/commit/ec8b741ecf60bf1cfc6e44428afb20764109430a
• Minor spacing and spelling fixes on some chrome:// pages that Thorium modifies. > https://github.com/Alex313031/thorium/commit/8d050fcf04e356c1a6dc2bed839181ae3a99872f
• Added Policy Templates for people wanting to set enterprise policies, or simply to see the available options to control certain behaviors. These are identical to the ones for Chromium, except the directory names and registry key names have been changed to "Thorium" so that you don't have to do that yourself. They are in the thorium_policy_templates.zip file. > https://github.com/Alex313031/thorium/commit/dcf4dd9848eb2a3041896d00eec135d3281d17ec
• Added a Memorial easter egg dedicated to my Grandmother "Gramma Linda", who I spent the last month in the hospital with, and she sadly died March 23, 2024 at the age of 83. 😭 Born on Dec. 27th, 1940. You can view the easter egg by running Thorium from the cmdline with --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
• The NTP page was broken when using a search engine other than Google, including the extra ones I added to some locales. I fixed it here > https://github.com/Alex313031/thorium/commit/e11300316f324c389fe513f12911014d3e1d605c
• Fixed the 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.
• Updated libhighway in the libjxl repo to 1.1.0 > https://github.com/Alex313031/thorium-libjxl/commit/1a4d1e77902ada5e673a1881d2efa54a6d55f95c for better SIMD optimization
• Update libjxl to 0.10.2, which makes JPEG-XL rendering much faster, and fixes bugs when images were above a certain size > https://github.com/Alex313031/thorium-libjxl/commit/fb2a3d6a7925ecaab68b729fe64f6ea277221251
• Regular (i.e. AVX) releases now have "AVX" in the name, to reduce confusion.
• Added SSE4 builds for people with i.e. Core 2 Duo or 1st Gen Core i systems.

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.

Nothing too special this release, just your standard Chromium upgrade.

However, five things:

• Fixed the profile picker crash, which would cause Thorium to just segfault and crash without warning or any useful log output if you tried to add a new profile, OR if you had multiple profiles already added. This is my fault and I was being a dummy last release. Let me explain: Last release notes I said "Enabled AutoPlay toggle in Settings, I previously had it disabled due to a crash". Well I literally left myself a comment line to remind me what the crash was > https://github.com/Alex313031/thorium/commit/5373a94bf0e367529c5b9fb5dd07044fb341eba9#diff-67eea7cc5329808ed94c726a817ead2b1ac9a0d35a01e6360f553f7e63703572R1116 Yet I just tested to make sure the browser didn't crash on startup (which it wouldn't on my end because I only use one profile). I forgot to check by making a new profile(s). Thus, I declared the bug "fixed" when it really wasn't, and promptly got spammed with a bunch of sad people who's browsers were crashing. This was a stupid mistake on my part, and I'm sorry to anyone whos workflows got interrupted and the frustration that people were having. I will probably leave this setting disabled indefinitely, since I already added a chrome://flags flag to control this behavior anyway > 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
• Disabled some more "Privacy Sandbox" bullcrap
• Added a patch from Ungoogled to disable captive portal detection. Note this won't work in all cases. Fixes https://github.com/Alex313031/thorium/issues/528
• This release is actually ahead of the version in official stable Chrome right now (.128 minor rev), as I spotted a nice security fix in V8 that was not landed until the .132 minor revision.
• Thorium now installs the "dev" build of UBlock Origin (to better block YouTube ads)

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).

M121 Thorium's 30th version birthday!

• Disabled annoying feature promos like "Show me how to set Chrome's theme?" and "Do you want to take the privacy check now?". It wouldn't be so bad if these didn't appear randomly, and interrupt your workflow by blocking interaction with the rest of the browser until you click "Yes" or "Not right now". (Also notice how they say "Not right now" instead of "No". WTF is up with corporations doing this. It's subtle, but it's like psychologically saying "we'll let you say no now, but we expect you to change your decision later". Like no, leave me alone!).
• Dolby Vision should now use proper color space info from your machine. Note that Dolby support still requires a hardware decoder to work at all, unlike HEVC/H.265 content which we added a patch to allow software decoding.
• Updated 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
• Network Certificates now use the BoringSSL library (yes that's really its name), which is better overall than OpenSSL. (Don't worry, BoringSSL is still open source, and is actually a fork of OpenSSL).
• Enabled a new Experimental feature, called 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.
• Added a new flag for Linux users > 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.
• Re-enabled a setting that I previously disabled due to crashes, which allows you to toggle AutoPlay settings at chrome://settings/content/sound
• Added a flag to enable VAAPI on NVidia GPUs (requires a vdpau translation driver) > 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.
• Added a much requested feature to be able to disable the colored custom top bar icons. You can now disable them with the flag > 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
• Prevented Thorium complaining about missing Vulkan drivers on non-Intel platforms. This has been a long standing issue in Chromium, but I'm not going to file a bug because it is used by their infrastructure.
• Added Thorium's extra search engines to even more locales, including Mexico and Venezuela.
• Completely disabled the "Privacy Sandbox" (previously known as FLOC), because it's a s**tshow, and not good for user's privacy at all. See > https://proton.me/blog/google-privacy-sandbox
• Enabled a compiler flag called _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
• Removed some extraneous LLVM opts
• Re-enabled the chrome://whats-new page after I accidentally disabled it in M117.
• More SIMD optimizations in the AVX2 versions.
• I changed the download bubble flag name to chrome://flags/#disable-download-bubble, so if you changed this to restore the old download shelf, you will need to set it again.
• Updated the documentation in the //docs directory, and on the site at https://thorium.rocks/docs which should allow you all to easily make your own builds now. Previously, following the docs which were very out of date (out of date for both upstream and because of the new build scripts added to the repo) would not yield a working browser. Fixes https://github.com/Alex313031/thorium/issues/488, https://github.com/Alex313031/thorium/issues/362, https://github.com/Alex313031/thorium/issues/551, and https://github.com/Alex313031/thorium/issues/477.
• Added SSE3, AVX, and AVX2 builds for both Windows and Linux. I am deprecating the Thorium-Linux-AVX2, Thorium-SSE3, and Thorium-Win-AVX2 repos.
• Added a new build of Thorium_UI_Debug_Shell since I haven't done that in a long time, and I will need it for the upcoming M122 due to Chrome Refresh 2023 and having to make new .icon files.

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

M120

• More optimization flags as per guidance from @RobRich999 here > https://github.com/RobRich999/Chromium_Clang/issues/26#issuecomment-1898744696
• Blocked annoying obtrusive promos like "Show me how to change the background"
• Added a new right-click menu item to "Save video frame" which you can use to save a .png of the current paused frame.
• Added three new chrome://flags flags. These are:
• 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.

First, to address the easter egg and website stuff, here is my explanation/apology post > https://alex313031.blogspot.com/2024/01/the-good-bad-and-ugly.html (it also addresses why I was gone for a month).

M119 (M118 was too old, so skipped that version)

• Fixes multiple CVEs including https://github.com/advisories/GHSA-xm5p-7w7v-qqr5
• Better HLS support
• Better JavaScript compilation performance due to new Thorium compiler flags as well as upstream V8 re-workings.
• Updated Widevine versions
• The search engine choices that Thorium adds are now available in more locales. (Notably not in Russia or China because ya know, their governments being oppressive and stuff and not allowing certain URLs. Hong Kong and Ukraine are not affected).
• Live Caption should now finally work (English only, sorry. The .grdp files for other languages are closed source for now).
• ChromeCast can now use VP8 and VP9 codecs for less bandwidth consumption if you have slower internet. (Note that this is disabled by default in Chromium, I enabled it, but it is still experimental).
• New chrome://flags flag 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.
• Thorium on Linux with multiple monitors should now restore Thorium to the last monitor it was open on.
• Storage Access API was disabled because the security risk is more than the usability improvement. If you need this, use the new chrome://flags/#storage-access-api flag I added to enable it.
• Keyboard shortcuts in ThoriumOS now align better with Linux.
• Portable version now also sets the cache dir to ./.config/cache, to prevent any disk writes outside of the dir.
• Rejoice! If you are like me and hate the new "Download bubble" and want the old "Download shelf" back, well I reverted a commit from upstream, and now there is a flag for it! > chrome://flags#download-bubble
• Windows builds are now more hardened against memory overflows by enabling the arg "win_enable_cfg_guards = true"
• PGO is now more effective (thanks @RobRich999) > https://github.com/Alex313031/thorium/commit/5fe393754c8f49a27940b332affd5cc028be1e1d
• New flag from Ungoogled-Chromium chrome://flags#tab-hover-cards Allows removing tab hover card images, and instead replace with a tooltip (the behavior before M106).
• Added SSE3 builds for people without AVX-capable CPUs > https://github.com/Alex313031/thorium-sse3

• Removed VDPAU patch as Chromium has unified the VAAPI backend. It didn't work half the time anyway. If you have an Nvidia card like me, sorry but we're stuck with software video decoding (except for H.264 with the FOSS nouveau drivers). This also removed 4 files that were always alot of work for me to rebase.
• Removed Linux middle click autoscroll by default because it caused bugs for some people. You can still enable it by using the cmdline flag --enable-blink-features=MiddleClickAutoscroll (and I removed the warning bar for people who do). Fixes > https://github.com/Alex313031/thorium/issues/199
• You can now choose to not show full URLs. Previously it was forced to true, and selecting/unselecting "Always show full URLs" would do nothing. It is now still enabled by default, but you can choose to unselect it. I will be making a PR to Ungoogled Chromium about this.
• HEVC/H.265 decoding is now multi-threaded. Thanks to @RobRich999 for pointing this out and where to enable it.
• Two major security vulnerabilities in libwebp and libvpx were fixed. See the new security policy for info about submitting security bugs, and a list of fixed vulnerabilities (which will be updated henceforth). If you use any of my Electron apps, those were also recently fixed.
• On top of my Thorium-Win7 fork, which will soon be updated to be based on Supermium M118 (me and @gz83 are working on a unified patch for this), I also made a new repo: https://github.com/Alex313031/chromium-xp with ongoing work to resurrect Chromium on XP. I currently have fixed google search, compiling with the windows 10 sdk, and added Thorium's optimizations (minus AVX).
• chrome_management_service should work properly now, if any of you out there are using Thorium with enterprise policies set.
• Slightly higher Speedometer scores, due to both upstream optimizations, and me tweaking rustflags in the compiler config.

M116

• The old VaapiVideoDecodeAccelerator path was completely removed upstream, in favour of the new VDAVideoDecoder backend that now powers both Chromium and ChromiumOS. Consequently, the VAAPI and Intel HD patches were removed. The VDPAU patch is now the only remaining graphics patch, for Nvidia users. This should hopefully fix issues people have been having with VAAPI and Wayland. Indeed some people have commented in this issue saying that a vanilla graphics backend works better than Thorium with all of the patches applied.
• 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.
• I enabled an experimental setting in Appearance to toggle tab hover cards. This can also be controlled via the traditional chrome://flags flag
• I enabled an upcoming UI design change that was supposed to land in M117, but I enabled it early. This moves the Extensions submenu from "More Tools" in the main menu, into its own dedicated menu item.
• New "Name Window" item in "More Tools". This allows you to manually override the window name, i.e. what appears in the window's title and what appears in the taskbar.
• initial_preferences file is now included in the Windows installer, to show the Welcome page on first launch after the first install.
• New internal variable specifying the type (i.e. AVX, AVX2, SSE3, etc.) is being shipped to facilitate the new Thorium-Win-Updater project me and ltguillaume have been working on, to allow auto update for Windows (Linux users already have it, if you are using the deb repo).

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.

M115 : This release is all about bug fixes, rather than new features.

• Storage Access API enabled by default upstream. I actually have a web app on the Thorium website that can make use of this new web standard > https://thorium.rocks/misc/vector-icon-app/
• Added Middle Click AutoScroll for Linux (normally only enabled on Windows). Please report any bugs encountered - Fixes https://github.com/Alex313031/thorium/issues/199
• REMOVED Wayland VAAPI patch as it was causing too many bugs for too many people to be worth it. - Fixes https://github.com/Alex313031/thorium/issues/162
• Tabstrip window dragging bug fix for Windows (and possibly Linux and Mac, pending further investigation). - Fixes https://github.com/Alex313031/thorium/issues/197
• Profile picker crash fix. This was a major bug that occurred on all platforms, causing the browser to crash when trying to select a different profile other than the default one or guest one. Fixes https://github.com/Alex313031/Thorium-Win/issues/58 and https://github.com/Alex313031/Thorium-AVX2/issues/95. The cause of it was narrowed down to this line, something completely unrelated code wise, but somehow caused a segmentation fault in the memory manager.
• NTP Discovery fix for Android (Not so much a "fix" but just removing it so it doesn't look ugly). - Fixes https://github.com/Alex313031/Thorium-Special/issues/16#issuecomment-1228140677
• Fixed potential building problems on MacOS.

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.

• Minor revision update to fix security vulnerabilities, as an interim release until M115 which will come in 2 weeks.
• Fixed minor WebUI images missing
  Otherwise, same release notes as the previous release.
   
• Happy 50th Release! 🥳

M114

Upstream Changes

• Chromium 114 has even better support for WebGPU than 113. For more info about this, see the previous release notes.
• Chromium and Thorium now support specifying and appending commandline flags via the 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
• V8 (Chromium's JavaScript engine) has added some new optimizations to the Maglev compiler. A noticeable difference in JIT javascript compilation can be seen between Chromium 113 and 114. Interesting read here > https://blog.chromium.org/2023/06/how-chrome-achieved-high-scores-on.html Thanks @midzer for telling me about this.

Thorium Changes

• libjxl updated to 0.8.2 (Adds better transparency/alpha support) Thanks @gz83 for helping me with this.
• libhighway updated to 1.0.4 (Minor SIMD upgrade)
• Fixes for Wayland (should hopefully fix https://github.com/Alex313031/thorium/issues/162)
• HEVC and AC3 support have been restored (as promised)
• More Android ARM64 optimizations
• New "media foundation" widevine path on Windows by using the 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)
• RPM support so that people on those distros don't have to use the .zip or .appimage anymore. (Fixes https://github.com/Alex313031/thorium/issues/139)
  IMPORTANT You will have to use sudo rpm --install --nodeps file.rpm because it tries to install libffmpeg.so.
• Debian 12 "Bookworm" Support

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.

M113

Upstream Changes

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.

Thorium Changes

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

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 window

Also 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)

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)

M110 is shaping up to be a great release!

• JPEG-XL functionality RESTORED; thanks to @jonsneyers @mo271 and @gz83 for helping with this.
  There is a new repo for the source code for this, used as a submodule in this repo. > https://github.com/Alex313031/thorium-libjxl
  In case you didn't know, Google decided to be a d**k and remove JPEG-XL support after M109, as well as Windows 7/8/8.1 support.
• Thorium now supports the AC3 codec, including in HEVC/H.265 videos. Thanks to @midzer for helping find a patch, which I manually converted to work on M110.
• HEVC/H.265 videos now support all profiles.
• More optimization flags for V8, Chromium's Javascript engine.
• Added four new chrome://flags flags:
  – chrome://flags/#force-gpu-mem-available-mb - Set available VRAM to be used by Thorium. Options are 128, 256, 512, and 1024 Mb. Useful for systems with very low or very high video memory. The default (if unset) is 512 Mb.
  – chrome://flags/#enable-native-gpu-memory-buffers - Enable native CPU-mappable GPU memory buffer support on Linux. (Linux only) You can see the effect of this on chrome://gpu in the "GpuMemoryBuffers Status" section.
  – chrome://flags/#double-click-close-tab - A flag that @gz83 came up with and we both implemented. Allows you to close a tab by simply double-clicking on it, similar to an option in Vivaldi.
  – chrome://flags/#show-fps-counter - Show a F.P.S. counter on each display, which also shows used/available GPU memory. Useful for Web development.
• Logo has had padding removed, and a new logo was created for the windows installer .exe.
• New desktop action on Linux, to "Open New Window with a temporary profile". This can be used even if Thorium is already running. It will make a new profile in /tmp, and use that. NOTE: Upon system restart, the /tmp dir is cleared.
• Thorium mascot image added to chrome://version page, under the copyright (for fun)

• M109 Maintenance release.
• HEVC patch rebased and re-added (simple version bump from 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.

@gz83 @midzer

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

• M109
• HEVC Software Decoding should now work, enabling you to play H.265 videos no matter what.
• Hide Side Panel button chrome://flags flag has been fixed.
• Minor bugs fixed
• New flag added > chrome://flags/#auto-dark-mode which puts this behind a flag to as not to impede the chrome://flags/#force-dark-mode flag, and so that it is not force enabled by default.

• See also SSE3 Linux Release > https://github.com/Alex313031/Thorium-Special/releases/tag/M109.0.5361.0_1
• See also Raspberry Pi Release > https://github.com/Alex313031/Thorium-Special/releases/tag/M109.0.5361.0_2

• M108
• Going to be working on a flag to enable/disable the auto dark gtk patch.

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