40 points by jqssun 7 hours ago | 7 comments
Lucian6 2 hours ago
I've been digging into Vanadium's extension support implementation and this looks like a solid approach for Android. The key challenge we faced with WebExtensions on mobile was the memory footprint - each extension runs in its own process which can add 30-50MB of overhead per extension on resource-constrained devices.

Curious how you're handling the isolation/sandboxing model here? The standard Chrome approach of site isolation + process-per-extension becomes pretty heavy on mobile. Have you considered using a shared process model with context isolation instead? We found that careful use of V8 contexts could give similar security guarantees with ~70% less memory overhead, though it required some tricky IPC handling between the extensions and main browser process.

Also worth noting that the WebExtension manifest v3 transition adds some extra complexity for mobile browsers - particularly around the service worker lifecycle and background page limitations. Would love to hear how you're approaching that migration path.

sphars 5 hours ago
Ah thought I saw a Helium browser mentioned recently on HN[0] and thought this was the same thing. So this is not the same as this Helium browser [1]?

[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45366867

[1]: https://helium.computer/

VPenkov 4 hours ago
The repository introduces it as indeed based on Helium [0].

The cool part about Helium is that it's based on patches, rather than forking the full source code. I don't know how sustainable this is in the long term, but it's an interesting approach for sure.

[0]: https://helium.computer/

kelnos 3 hours ago
Not sure what's cool about that. A fork is a patch set, with a ton more ergonomics on top. Passing around sets of patches was what we did before VCSs were common/easy-to-set-up, and it was always brittle and annoying.
imcritic 5 hours ago
Do you have any plans to push it to F-Droid?

That would raise the value of that project quite a lot (at least for me, but I feel like there are others, thinking similarly).

Please, push it to F-Droid!

xrd 4 hours ago
I second this!
xrd 5 hours ago
Fascinating, I use Firefox because on Android I can use extensions (for this https://plzat.me). This is a great alternative.

Edit: hard to find where to get this browser. Do I need to build it myself?

Fnoord 4 hours ago
With Obtanium you can add the URL (https://github.com/jqssun/android-helium-browser) and it will automatically notify when a new version is available. Kind of like a package manager for GitHub and other sources (for stuff not available on F-Droid).
theusus 2 hours ago
There is Quetta browser that is stable and support extensions on mobile.
rahimnathwani 3 hours ago
Click on 'Releases' and you'll see a link to an apk download.
vrinsd 5 hours ago
This is really great work, but can you comment on whether or not any Google-based "safebrowsing", etc is still enabled in the code base?

Have you thought about merging your efforts with ungoogled-chromium (Android)?

There USED to be an ungoogled-chromium for Android (circa v88 chrome, the APK is still available for download) that also allowed extentions.

xnx 5 hours ago
I've been looking for a Kiwi Browser replacement since it stopped updating. I'll check this out.
mrbluecoat 1 hour ago
Curious how it compares to Brave browser on Android