Kiwi Browser

05nelsonm

Kiwi Browser was booted from G Play store for this b/c it violated YouTube's terms of service. Would advise against it. Just have to use Android's native split screen capabilities instead

modedit Splitted, joined Kiwi posts and moved new thread

05nelsonm

Mobile supporting extensions is absolutely liberating. I use Kiwi Browser and have turned off all the google garbage left over from the chromium portion of the browser, + blocked dirty connections via NetGuard Pro.

Am able to load uBlock, NoScript, HTTPS Everywhere, Floccus (for book mark syncing with my nextcloud), Cookie Auto-Delete (currently not working, but they are on it), Tampermonkey.

Customization is the number 1 reason why people are flocking to mobile browsers that support extensions, and I really really love Vivaldi's desktop browser and am super thankful for all the hard work they have done, but I would not use the mobile version if it does not support extensions.

iAN CooG

@05nelsonm kiwi is still available and works well, they readded extensions support, so we can use uBlock Origin and other extensions with it.

jacekn

Kiwi is nice and I was at first amazed by it, which resulted in this thread: https://forum.vivaldi.net/topic/36638/what-extensions-you-d-like-to-use-on-mobile-browser

But after a month with it:

extension support is buggy. Extensions usually are toggling themselves off (probably OS/browser itself kills their processes[?]), you have to reenable them each time
extension support is buggy. Sometimes I click an extension icon, but popup is always run in context of first tab, not the current one - it recently got some tweaks and it may be finally fixed, I'm not sure yet, because I'm pissed off to re-enable extensions every time I use this browser
dark mode is buggy. It has problems with background-color only elements and elements that partially relies on background-color or border-color (like indicators of status). Some information is lost because of that elements has colors matching the background and in result becomes invisible. Also I've seen invisible text, like "grey on grey". HTTP Basic auth has messed up colors too (white on white).

This isn't a new browser, just the extensions support are new thing so I was puzzled to see so much issues (there are more, I just can't remember them all).

Still - it's a nice project. But for protecting myself from ads and trackers (and scripting) I'd stick with Brave browser for now.

arnaud42

Hi @jacekn

Main maintainer of Kiwi here.

I'm often lurking here, waiting for Jon to release the Android version (I think Vivaldi for Android is going to be one of the most exciting product in the mobile browsers) and I know that Vivaldi's team has been reviewing Kiwi too.

Sure Kiwi is not perfect, and Kiwi moves quite fast, one month is an eternity with Kiwi Browser (the browser is only 1 year old, so it's 10% of its lifetime ).

The extension toggling has been fixed in latest release from today (Eden). Or should be

You were absolutely right, it was the memory manager of Android trying to kill some background processes. Very very tricky to catch and diagnose.

The popup that runs in the wrong tab was fixed a month ago or so.

About adblocker and tracking, there is a quite strong content filter integrated in Kiwi (and most people complain that it is too strong by default because it messes with cookie popups that it wants to block).

The tracking protection of Kiwi outperforms Brave in many situation ( see https://panopticlick.eff.org/ ).

You'd be surprised to see many of the Brave's choices It's an ad company after all.

Also by using extensions you are free to set and block/allow any hosts and not limited to the browser's maker choices.

For Dark Mode, you can now set the Theme of the browser to black, and use Dark Reader extension.

If you have more suggestions to improve the integrated Dark Mode (I have noted your points) I'll certainly take them

urfausto

This post is deleted!

Catweazle

I use Kiwi as a second browser. Not for supporting extensions that I do not use on Android, I have enough with Blokada that keeps away trackers and ads well, online and in installed apps. Anyway I only use Open Source apps, mainly from F-Droid. At all, privacy cannot be protected in a Google-controlled OS, but at least as much as possible.

k7gV8Y

@arnaud42 said in Kiwi Browser:

Hi @jacekn

Main maintainer of Kiwi here.

I'm often lurking here, waiting for Jon to release the Android version (I think Vivaldi for Android is going to be one of the most exciting product in the mobile browsers) and I know that Vivaldi's team has been reviewing Kiwi too.

Hey @arnaud42! I am a huge kiwi fan! I use it everyday. I am happy to hear kiwi has gone open source!

Is there any word as to whether Vivaldi is going to use any of Kiwi's code in their mobile browser, or if you told me would you have to kill me?

Keep up the good work!