ungoogled-chromium

# ungoogled-chromium

*A lightweight approach to removing Google web service dependency*

**Help is welcome!** See the [docs/contributing.md](docs/contributing.md) document for more information.

## Objectives

In descending order of significance (i.e. most important objective first):

1. **ungoogled-chromium is Google Chromium, sans dependency on Google web services**.
2. **ungoogled-chromium retains the default Chromium experience as closely as possible**. Unlike other Chromium forks that have their own visions of a web browser, ungoogled-chromium is essentially a drop-in replacement for Chromium.
3. **ungoogled-chromium features tweaks to enhance privacy, control, and transparency**. However, almost all of these features must be manually activated or enabled. For more details, see [Feature Overview](#feature-overview).

In scenarios where the objectives conflict, the objective of higher significance should take precedence.

## Content Overview

* [Objectives](#objectives)
* [Motivation and Philosophy](#motivation-and-philosophy)
* [Feature Overview](#feature-overview)
* [**Downloads**](#downloads)
* [Source Code](#source-code)
* [**FAQ**](#faq)
* [Building Instructions](#building-instructions)
* [Design Documentation](#design-documentation)
* [**Contributing, Reporting, Contacting**](#contributing-reporting-contacting)
* [Credits](#credits)
* [Related Projects](#related-projects)
* [License](#license)

## Motivation and Philosophy

Without signing in to a Google Account, Chromium does pretty well in terms of security and privacy. However, Chromium still has some dependency on Google web services and binaries. In addition, Google designed Chromium to be easy and intuitive for users, which means they compromise on transparency and control of internal operations.

ungoogled-chromium addresses these issues in the following ways:

1. Remove all remaining background requests to any web services while building and running the browser
2. Remove all code specific to Google web services
3. Remove all uses of pre-made binaries from the source code, and replace them with user-provided alternatives when possible.
4. Disable features that inhibit control and transparency, and add or modify features that promote them (these changes will almost always require manual activation or enabling).

These features are implemented as configuration flags, patches, and custom scripts. For more details, consult the [Design Documentation](docs/design.md).

## Feature Overview

*This section overviews the features of ungoogled-chromium. For more detailed information, it is best to consult the source code.*

Contents of this section:

* [Key Features](#key-features)
* [Enhancing Features](#enhancing-features)
* [Borrowed Features](#borrowed-features)
* [Supported Platforms and Distributions](#supported-platforms-and-distributions)

### Key Features

*These are the core features introduced by ungoogled-chromium.*

* Disable functionality specific to Google domains (e.g. Goog