M151 Beta Release!

(This release is intended only to reach and notify more users; it does not contain a new version!!!)

Hello everyone, I’m gz83, a collaborator on the Thorium browser project. Since Alex is currently unable to find the time to update Thorium, I have temporarily taken over and completed the initial upgrade from M150 to M151. The code is available here:

https://github.com/gz83/thorium

After publishing BETA builds for the different supported platforms, I will submit my M151-Stable branch to Alex as a pull request for review and discuss the update with him further.

If you would like to try the BETA version, please download it from the following repository:

https://github.com/gz83/thorium/releases/tag/M151.0.7922.72

M150 Beta Release!

(This release is intended only to reach and notify more users; it does not contain a new version!!!)

Hello everyone, I’m gz83, a collaborator on the Thorium browser project. Since Alex is currently unable to find the time to update Thorium, I have temporarily taken over and completed the initial upgrade from M144 to M150. The code is available here:

https://github.com/gz83/thorium/tree/M150-LTS

After publishing BETA builds for the different supported platforms, I will submit my M150-LTS branch to Alex as a pull request for review and discuss the update with him further.

If you would like to try the BETA version, please download it from the following repository:

https://github.com/gz83/thorium/releases/tag/M150.0.7871.47

M150 Beta V1 Release!

(This release is intended only to reach and notify more users; it does not contain a new version!!!)

Hello everyone, I’m gz83, a collaborator on the Thorium browser project. Since Alex is currently unable to find the time to update Thorium, I have temporarily taken over and completed the initial upgrade from M144 to M150. The code is available here:

https://github.com/gz83/thorium/tree/M150-LTS

After publishing BETA builds for the different supported platforms, I will submit my M150-LTS branch to Alex as a pull request for review and discuss the update with him further.

If you would like to try the BETA version, please download it from the following repository:

https://github.com/gz83/thorium/releases/tag/M150.0.7871.101

M144 Beta Release!

(This release is intended only to reach and notify more users; it does not contain a new version!!!)

Hello everyone, I’m gz83, a collaborator on the Thorium browser project. Since Alex is currently unable to find the time to update Thorium, I have temporarily taken over and completed the initial upgrade from M138 to M144. The code is available here:

https://github.com/gz83/thorium/tree/M144-LTS

Thorium has now been experimentally updated to M144.0.7559.254. This is a BETA release. Please report any issues you encounter in the main Thorium repository. For changes between M138 LTS and M144 LTS, please refer to Google’s release notes:

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

https://support.google.com/chrome/a/answer/12239814

After publishing BETA builds for the different supported platforms, I will submit my M144-LTS branch to Alex as a pull request for review and discuss the update with him further.

If you would like to try the BETA version, please download it from the following repository:

https://github.com/gz83/thorium/releases/tag/M144.0.7559.254

M138.0.7204.303 - 45th Release

M138 R2

• Includes security fixes from upstream for latest M138 LTS version: DIFF
• Corrected issue where "Open in Current Tab" was placed where "Open in New tab" used to be in the webpage right click menu, which ruined muscle memory and annoyed many users (including me). Alex313031/thorium#1110
• Colored icons corrected.
• Fixed the download shelf not showing tooltips on hover. Alex313031/thorium@fac9b6d
• Fixed crash in profile selector Alex313031/thorium#1115 & Alex313031/thorium#1137
• Fix misc. crashes that should have been fixed upstream, but weren't > Alex313031/thorium#1145
• Fix crash when "Remove Tab Search Button" flag is enabled Alex313031/thorium#1111
• WebRTC should now work, for example Zoom calls, Discord, etc. Alex313031/thorium#1113
• Easter eggs page (chrome://eggs) now works again (favicon needs fixing) Alex313031/thorium@bbdf320
• New GUI installer with progress bar and confirmation, that builds on top of the installer from previous M138 release > Alex313031/thorium@af404cd

Known Issues:

• Top bar window dragging space (above the tabs) when Window is unmaximized is (still) too large on Windows and Linux.

M138.0.7204.300 - 44th Release

Happy New Year Release!

Whoo 😅 It took a long while to get here. Many months without updates.
However, going forward, Thorium will be based on the latest LTS (Long Term Support) Chromium revision, which changes twice a year. This will let me focus on features, bug fixes, and keeping Thorium secure, instead of always having to do the long, tedious work of rebasing to a new major Chromium revision. With my new job, I simply don't have as much free time. M138 is the current one, M144 is going to be the new LTS in 2 months. In between, I can make minor updates to Thorium to address security concerns and major bugs.

• Th24 now 98% complete, good enough for a release, Ill fix minor stuff in a future build.
• Restored ability to install MV2 extensions from the web store (previously you would have to sideload a .crx, or keep MV2 extensions you already had installed in that user profile).
• Fixed the Download Shelf crash, so chrome://flags/#download-shelf works again for people like me who hate the new download bubble. (bug in prev. beta release)
• Fixed Notification settings crash that plagued the last release. (bug in prev. beta release)
• Fixed Google sync not working and fixed translate not showing on some sites (bug in prev. beta release)
• Added HEVC patches (bug in prev. beta release)
• Windows Installer now has a dialog asking if you want to install (use --silentcommandline switch to revert to old silent behaviour)

Also, thanks to @gz83 work, the FTP patch is restored and working! Since Supermium removed the FTP patch, this makes Thorium the only browser left on earth that still supports FTP. FTP users, continue as you were 😁

Known Issues:

1. Top bar window dragging space (above the tabs) when Window is unmaximized is too large on Windows and GTK3 (Linux)
2. Some colored icons are missing in WebUI (people who hate my colored icons will rejoice 😆 )
3. Ask.com was removed as a search engine.
4. Easter eggs page isn't working (need to find out why, patches are in there)
5. EDIT: Corrected issue where "Open in Current Tab" was placed where "Open in New tab" used to be, which ruined muscle memory.

EDIT: Sorry, took more like 50 hours to get the rest of the builds out. I'm in the middle of moving, so I've been physically exhausted. 😪

M130.0.6723.174 - 43rd Release

M130

This release took a long time (3+ months!) to get out because of a new full time job, and the fact that Windows builds are still crashing. Windows builds are still delayed until I can figure it out. Might need to procure the help of some upstream Chromium devs that are nice enough to help me for free. Me and @midzer decided it would be a good idea to go ahead and release the Linux builds, which are working perfectly, even though we can't release for other platforms yet. UPDATE: Good news, I finally fixed the Windows crash, and MacOS builds are working again! So get ready for M130 for all the other platforms within the next day!

This is one of the complaints from the community that has always been valid, I am one man doing 95% of the coding work, so I can't keep it as up to date as a whole team or corporation can (@gz83 and @midzer occasionally help with coding, but mostly just make Windows and MacOS builds, and help with maintenance tasks).

If you are very concerned about Thorium not always being on the latest Chromium, then perhaps use another browser, or only use Thorium for specific tasks like JPEG-XL or viewing FTP sites. I use it all day, everyday, for work and pleasure, on all my various computers/old phones, since 2021 when I started the project. I've never gotten hacked, or gotten malware. That isn't to say that some zero-day, that they may have patched in a minor revision that Thorium hasn't been updated to yet, couldn't leave Thorium more vulnerable than Google Chrome for instance. It is just that usually, it would have to be a targeted attack, and running this build based on Chromium M130, rather than M132 (the latest), isn't going to turn your computer into some sort of virus magnet all of a sudden. Basically all I am saying is that the complaints and reasoning are very valid, but perhaps some of ya'll are getting a little too afraid and/or heated about it. (People getting mad at me on Reddit, or spamming my email with links to new zero days that have been found in Chromium).

---

New explainer document (with pictures!) about Cr23 and Th24 UI stuff: >> TH24.md

More Th24 fixes/updates include:

• More Chrome Labs items like "Middle Click Scroll"
• Tab Search button alignment is fixed. On Linux/MacOS it is also restored to the original rounded shape. On Windows, it is restored to the old style of being a window control button, like the minimize/maximize/close buttons.
• Colors are Restored! I originally didn't want to do this, but it turned out to be relatively easy. The old, non Cr23 colors had more contrast, and were more neutral so they blended better with different OSes styling. In addition, the "Customize Thorium" side panel now has the old color options on top of the existing new ones. See explainer document for pictures.
• Top bar icon sizes were slightly increased, to make them look better with the old UI.
• Omnibox suggestion row button radius was fixed
• Downloads page (chrome://downloads/) duplicate close button on previously downloaded items was fixed.
• Toggle button styling were restored. See explainer document for pictures.
• Dialog box sizing was restored. See explainer document for pictures.
• Sharing hub button was restored on the right side of the omnibox, where the bookmark button is, along with the original icon.
• Bookmarks folder icon restored for Linux now too (originally I just restored the Windows one).
• Bookmarks bar overflow button and "All Bookmarks" button alignment fixed.
• Omnibox left-hand-side separator is restored, as well as the color of the icon.
• Original new tab button and tab search button icons restored
• Unmaximized window frame grab handle height fixed in Th24
• Menu arrows restored to pre-Cr23 icons.

---

• Global Privacy Control patch added! This makes Thorium one of the few Chromium based browsers to have it. Cromite and Brave have it, but I'm not aware of any others. You can test that it is working in Thorium by visiting https://global-privacy-control.glitch.me/. The setting is a toggle right below the "Do Not Track" toggle. Both are enabled by default in Thorium for the obvious privacy benefits. You can read more about it and toggle it on and off at chrome://settings/cookies.
• When the chrome://flags#rectangular-tabs I added in M128 is enabled, now the new tab button and tab search button will also have a rectangular appearance as well.
• New command line flag --reader-mode to start Thorium with reader mode turned on for all sites.
• Menu show delay time for menus and items was turned down to 0 milliseconds for all platforms. I hate artificial delays added to the UI of applications just to make it match the OS. Heck, I don't like it on the OS either, so I tweak the registry on Windows, or make a GNOME config on Ubuntu to do the same thing but for the whole OS.
• New file handler icons for Windows & MacOS. I might add some for Linux next release too.
• New menu items when right clicking a video
• Hardware acceleration issues with AMD GPUs on Linux fixed by reverting a status flag I had modified back to the way upstream Chromium had it.
• Bookmark bar separator colors fixed.
• Bug where the disable-thorium-icons flag was not working for the home button is fixed.
• Fixed fullscreen mode of the Dino game (called "Arcade Mode") at chrome://dino/. This is actually an upstream bug, so it is broken in Chrome/Chromium still as well! I also made a pull request upstream with the fix, but noone has looked at it yet. So for now Thorium is the only Chromium based browser with a working Arcade Mode of the dino game. So make sure when you are slacking off at work, you choose Thorium for jumping over stuff with a T-Rex! When my fix is (hopefully) accepted upstream, I will let ya'll know lol. The commit that broke it is Here for anyone interested.
• Text contrast increased for better readability in dark mode.
• Side panel grab handle size reduced because it's simply too big.
• Building for a given SIMD level is much easier now, for example an AVX2 or AVX512 or custom build. I did a major code refactor for the compiler optimizations of Thorium, and it can now be controlled through build args rather than source code. See Here for more info. (Only of interest to those building it for themselves).
• New debugging tool for USERS (not just devs). Backstory: Chromium/Thorium can be built with is_debug = true, but these builds are large, very slow, and not suitable for public release. They are normally only used internally by me and the builders @midzer and @gz83 , but they have one thing I wished I had by default: Verbose Logging. Well, now we do, even in non-debug builds! Set the new environment variable THORIUM_DEBUG=1 (or THORIUM_DEBUG=true) (for info on how to set an environment variables, see Here), and when running Thorium from the command line, it will respect them, and cause it to log to console with the same verbosity as a debug build normally would. This means it will show verbose info, non fatal errors and warnings (normally only fatal errors and certain warnings are shown). It will also show any output from the devtools console of the current tab, even if devtools isn't open! Basically this will let you gather a verbose log to send to me in a GitHub issue if I ask for it or if you already know that it's relevant to the bug at hand. It could also be useful for web devs since they can view the devtools console output without it being open.
• Security on Linux improved slightly by disallowing loading .so libraries from anywhere outside the directory the thorium binary resides in, or system library directories.
• Downloads bubble menu width increased to allow long filenames to be read easier.
• Close confirmation flag fixed.

I have also added a new flag to the Chrome Labs i.e. Thorium Experiments button (as well as the chrome://flags page of course), that controls a new feature that may become default in a later release. I am particularly proud of this new feature code-wise, as it was not easy to implement like one would think. Anyway, it is a new top bar button! Enabling chrome://flags#restore-tab-button will add a new little separator and button to the left side of the top bar, beside the home button (or reload button, if you have the home button turned off). Clicking it simply opens the last closed tab or window. Successive presses will open the 2nd last closed tab/window, etc. similar to Ctrl + Shift + T, just with a button instead of a keyboard shortcut for people who like to use their mouse.

Note: If you have turned on the "Disable Download Bubble" flag, you will need to turn it on again because the name and internal variable (which is why you have to set it again) has been changed to "Restore Download Shelf" & chrome://flags#download-shelf

Note 2: A full scale, C++ auto-updater that is directly integrated into the browser is in the works, instead of the kinda not so great https://github.com/Alex313031/thorium-winupdater. One that behaves just like Google Chrome's one, except without any enterprise policy or LTS Channel stuff. Although I do want to write it so that it detects what type of build you are running (i.e. AVX or SSE3) and downloads the appropriate version in the background to the system's TEMP folder. That way all you have to do to change from one version ...

M128.0.6613.189 - 42nd Release

M128
Thorium 2024 UI "Th24" is complete. Please see the past 3 beta releases if you aren't up to speed about it. On top of those, we now:

• Have the restored bookmarks folder icon used in the bookmarks ui and bookmarks bar
• Fixed spacing of the new tab button
• Added 180px as an option to the new custom-tab-width chrome flag
• Tab separators are 2px again after I had temporarily reverted back to 1px
• More WebUI stuff is reverted to its pre-Chrome 2023 appearance.
• I am writing a full write-up/explainer on what Cr23 is, what Th24 is, and why I made it. It will have pictures to illustrate as well. It isn't finished yet but you can find it Here.

---

Now, other stuff:

• New flag chrome://flags#classic-omnibox "classic omnibox". When enabled, the omnibox (i.e. url bar) takes on a more squareish shape similar to classic versions of Chromium/Chrome. It was adapted from the same flag in Supermium, but I adjusted the radius, and I fixed an issue with stuff not showing up quite right when the omnibox is focused, i.e. when the results are all showing up. Might make a pull request upstream.
• The Thorium 2024 flag was added to "Chrome Labs" to make it easier to enable than going to chrome://flags. Just click the "beaker" icon (actually an Erlenmeyer flask lol) in the top bar, and you can enable it there.
• New flag chrome://flags/#remove-tabsearch-button to remove the tab search button from the tab strip.
• The bug on Linux where me setting it to the classic theme by default was causing crashes is now fixed.
• I finally added some background music to the Chrome Dino game. You can hear it on chrome://dino
• Added a new WebUI page chrome://eggs that has images from the easter egg contest on it.
• I enabled the Customize Toolbar feature ahead of schedule (the official stable enabled by default release was in M129). This lets you add a bunch of stuff to the toolbar.
• The size of the main menu button (aka the "hamburger menu" or "three dots menu") has been corrected to be smaller
• Better compiler tuning on MacOS
• New flag chrome://flags#transparent-tabs, which makes tabs semi-transparent (Windows only)
• Limits of MV3 were removed. A MV3 extension like UBlock Origin Lite, if it were coded to take advantage of Thorium, now has limits on declarativeNetRequest that are similar to MV2. Thorium still intends to restore MV2 code when the time comes, but I thought this would be an interesting experiment. I might try to fork Ublock, so if you're interested in this, watch my GitHub account for a new repo.

Includes a build of Thorium UI Debug Shell (AVX only)
TODO: Fix alignment of tab search button, fix FTP link clicking.

BETA 2 Th24 build - M126.0.6478.251

• It has the same Th24 updates/fixes as the Beta 2 Linux build, so read those release notes here first > https://github.com/Alex313031/thorium/releases/tag/M126.0.6478.251 (And if you haven't used any of the beta builds yet, you should read the Beta 1 release notes to get up to speed about what all this Th24 stuff is about)
• On top of the fixes from the beta 2 Linux build, this release also:
• Force enables MV2 extensions at a lower level (Previous releases just set an enterprise policy flag to "On", this release enables it at the //components/extensions/ source code level)
• New chrome://flags flag "Custom Tab Width" chrome://flags#custom-tab-width: This lets you set the default tab width to 60px, 120px, 240px (the Chromium default), 300px, or 400px. I decided against adding a text box where you could type a specific width, because if you accidentally set it too small or too large, the browser becomes unusable. These pre-defined widths should cover most use cases. NOTE: Since the code I added uses pixel values (px) instead of DPI values (dp), if you have Windows set to a large DPI level like 200%, you should account for that and set the custom width value to lower than what you are wanting.
• Fixes menu spacing issues on Windows and MacOS to even more closely match the pre-CR23 style.
• Adds a new simple thorium_all build target, that automagically builds everything to make an official release build + installer for the given platform. (Of interest only to developers or people wanting to build Thorium themselves).
• Fixes some more spacing issues in the bookmarks bar
• Fixes spacing issue of tab separators, which made the horizontal padding between inactive tabs be wider than the vertical padding. I also went ahead and set the separators to 2 pixels wide instead of 1, so that deviates a bit from the pre-CR23 UI, but I think it looks better, and makes it easier to distinguish tabs when you have a billion of them in a single window (which I'm very guilty of doing). Speaking of that, Thorium's performance optimizations really show their shine when "hypertasking". For example, I tested Chrome M126 and Thorium M126, and found their speedometer 3.0 scores to be about identical, but when I tested them by opening 1,000 tabs spread across 10 windows (100 tabs per window), they used the same amount of RAM, but the CPU usage of Thorium was much less, and Thorium remained much more responsive than Chrome did, under such a heavy load. This is to be expected since AVX instructions lend themselves particularly well to very large datasets/transfers, and large matrix multiplication tasks (which are used in Chromium). I didn't test the SSE3/SSE4 builds. They will probably still perform better than Chrome, but they will definitely be less since they don't have AVX/AVX2 support. Related to the notes about AVX above, this is also why things like RAID software, databases, and machine vision/machine learning software are often compiled with AVX support.

Those of you who tested the Linux beta 2 build, and were happy with the results, and lastly requested I make a Windows equivalent release will now be happy. Please close those feedback issues if you can, I am already swamped by issues in all of my repos. If I haven't responded I promise I'm not ignoring you!

These builds are AVX only, sorry.

And yes I know, I know, I'm already behind on Chromium versions, thus will probably skip M127 and start work on M128 this weekend.

M138 Beta [DONT DOWNLOAD ANYMORE]

1st M138 Beta build for the masses, after 9 months of no updates!

EDIT: NON-BETA RELEASE BUILDS ARE HERE: https://github.com/Alex313031/Thorium-Win/releases/tag/M138.0.7204.300

M138.0.7204.193

• This is a raw beta build. Expect things to possibly not work properly.

• Only SSE3 builds, don't want to compile all the builds just for a beta

• Manifest V2 support restored!

• Includes debug checks, so might run slightly slower than a normal release build. (That's also why the abnormally large size).

• It is missing the FTP patches and HEVC software decoding patches, but otherwise, all of Thorium is there.

I will be adding some more patches, fixing 2 flags, and reviewing all my commits over the last month before making final public builds for all the platforms. So, I'm not going to write the full release notes with all the changes and fixes until then.

Known Issues:

1. Th24 has some minor layout irregularities, but it's 90% working properly.
2. Restore Download Shelf (i.e. remove Download Bubble) flag is not working, and causes crash.
3. Setting notification permission prompts ( chrome://settings/content/notifications ) to anything than what I set it to (quiet and unobtrusive) will cause renderer processes crash. The app will appear normal, but in the background, hundreds of processes are spawned and crash immediately. Suggestion: DONT mess with notification settings until I fix it.
4. Opening settings page can sometimes cause crash. I know what this is, other things just are taking priority over fixing that right now.

😸 Thank you everyone, that is all, wait for full release with full release notes before end of year!

      – Alex313031