Chromium Extend v1.2

A de-Googled build of Chromium Desktop Android that keeps browser extensions and video
playback working.

Built from Chromium 153.0.7999.0 (commit 945b5115) with twenty-one patches and five build
flags.

New in v1.2

This is the release where the Google surfaces actually go away. v1.1 still opened on a Google
search box, still asked you to sign in on first run, and still carried a Gemini button.

🦆 DuckDuckGo is the default search engine. Not something you change afterwards — it is what
a new profile ships with, and the new tab page follows it, so the Google logo is gone too.

🚫 No first-run screen. The browser opens straight to a new tab. The old screen promoted a
sign-in this build cannot do, and told you that usage and crash data are sent to Google, which
was never true here.

🧹 The New Tab Page is clean. The sign-in card, the "Chrome tips" carousel and the "Restore
your web apps" sheet are all gone. The tips carousel is removed entirely rather than card by
card, since its rotation also carried history sync, saved passwords and password checkup promos.

✨ No Gemini button. The sparkle in the bottom bar opened a sheet demanding Google account
verification. It is gone, and it can no longer be added back from Settings either.

👤 No avatar sign-in button. The profile circle on every new tab page did nothing but offer
to sign in.

🎬 Fullscreen video controls sit on the video. The scrubber used to be pinned to the bottom
of the screen, well below a letterboxed video. It now tracks the picture.

Screenshots

Two of these predate v1.2 and still show the older new tab page and settings.

Extension icons in the toolbar. Pinned extensions sit beside the address bar.	The extensions menu on a phone. Per-site permissions and Pin to toolbar — upstream only offers this at tablet widths.
An extension's own window. Dark Reader running from the toolbar, exactly as on a desktop.	Settings opens straight to Basics. No sign-in row, no Google services page.

What you get

🧩 Real browser extensions on your phone. Password managers, ad blockers, dark mode — the
same extensions you'd use on a desktop. Tap an extension's icon and its window opens properly,
and you can pin the ones you use most to the toolbar. Upstream only exposes this on tablet-width
layouts; here it works at phone widths too.

🔗 Links open in the browser, not in apps. Tapping a Reddit or YouTube result keeps you in
the browser instead of throwing you into their app mid-read. Phone numbers and email links still
open the right app.

📵 De-Googled. No background check-ins, and nothing about the forms you fill in gets sent off
for analysis. Google's built-in AI features are removed entirely, not just switched off.

🧹 No dead Google UI. No sign-in prompts, no Google services page, no password manager row
that only says it stopped working, no first-run screen, no promo cards.

🎬 Video still works, and fullscreen behaves. Ordinary video plays, and so does paid
streaming. Fullscreen respects your rotation lock instead of forcing landscape, fills the screen
rather than sitting off-centre beside the camera cutout, and keeps its controls on the video.

🛡️ Still safe to browse. Protections against fake certificates and downgraded connections are
deliberately kept. Privacy here doesn't come at the cost of security.

Install

Requires an arm64 Android device (Android 10 / SDK 29 or newer).

adb install -r ChromiumExtend-v1.2-153.0.7999.0-arm64.apk

Or copy the APK to the device and open it. You'll need to allow installing from unknown sources.

This APK is signed with a local debug key, so it will not upgrade over a Play Store Chrome or
Chromium install — it installs as its own app (org.chromium.chrome). It upgrades cleanly over
v1.0 and v1.1.

If you are upgrading, the DuckDuckGo default will not apply to you. Chromium persists the
chosen search engine per profile and prefers it over the shipped default, so an existing profile
keeps Google until you change it in Settings → Search engine. A fresh install gets DuckDuckGo.

What's removed

Twenty-one patches: two crash fixes, the phone-layout extensions toolbar, three fullscreen video
fixes, and fifteen de-Googling changes covering the variations seed fetch, network-time queries,
Autofill form-structure uploads, the Google Cloud Messaging push channel, the omnibox guards that
unblock removing the Google XR SDKs, two settings cleanups, the search engine default, the
first-run screen, three New Tab Page promo surfaces, the Gemini button, the avatar sign-in
button, and the Gemini toolbar shortcut option.

Five build flags remove ML Kit and AICore (the on-device Gemini Nano bridge), the
Gemini-in-Chrome surface, the Reporting API, local service discovery and mDNS.

Sign-in has no single gate in Chromium. Five separate patches remove five separate entry points,
and the honest expectation is that more exist rather than fewer.

Worth knowing: a public Chromium build already sends no usage metrics, no URL-keyed metrics and
no crash reports, because upstream withholds those endpoints from forks. Translate is likewise
inert without a Google API key. Those needed no patching.

Known limitations

• The DuckDuckGo default only applies to new profiles. See the install note above.
• Passkeys (WebAuthn) do not work. FIDO2_PRIVILEGED_API is restricted to Google-signed
  browsers, so any self-built Chromium is refused. Inherent to self-building, not caused by
  these patches.
• Web Push is gone, as a consequence of removing the GCM channel.
• Extension popups can be cropped. Extensions size their popup to content and may request a
  width wider than a phone screen.
• The omnibox is squeezed when several extensions are pinned. Unpinning all but one works
  around it.
• The New Tab Page still has an AI Mode button and Discover. The logo and the promo cards
  are gone; these two remain.
• Widevine is detected, but protected playback has not been exercised end to end.

Verified

Tested on a Pixel 10 Pro XL (arm64, Android 17). The search engine default, the first-run screen
and the New Tab Page changes were each verified on a wiped profile, which is the only honest
test for them: Chromium persists these decisions, and an existing profile masks the change and
makes a working fix look broken. Fullscreen video was checked in both orientations and against
element geometry read off the running page. No crashes across a full session.

License

BSD-3-Clause. The patches modify Chromium source and are subject to Chromium's license.
Chromium is a trademark of Google LLC. This project is unaffiliated.

Chromium Extend v1.1

A de-Googled build of Chromium Desktop Android that keeps browser extensions and video
playback working.

Built from Chromium 153.0.7999.0 (commit 945b5115) with twelve patches and five build flags.

New in v1.1

Two fixes to fullscreen video, both confirmed on device.

Fullscreen no longer forces landscape. Video sites call
screen.orientation.lock("landscape") when you tap fullscreen, which reaches
Activity.setRequestedOrientation() and overrides your system rotation lock outright — the phone
rotated even with rotation explicitly locked, and there was no way to refuse. That request is now
ignored, so fullscreen video follows the phone like every other app.

Fullscreen video is centred. A page that doesn't declare a viewport-fit — the default, which
video sites rarely override — was letterboxed away from the camera cutout. That left a dead strip
at the cutout edge and the video centred in what remained: pushed down in portrait, and sideways
in landscape, since it's the same physical edge. Fullscreen now draws into the cutout, as native
video players do. A page that explicitly asks to avoid the cutout still gets to.

Everything else is unchanged from v1.0. Patches 0001–0010 are identical.

Screenshots

Extension icons in the toolbar. Pinned extensions sit beside the address bar.	The extensions menu on a phone. Per-site permissions and Pin to toolbar — upstream only offers this at tablet widths.
An extension's own window. Dark Reader running from the toolbar, exactly as on a desktop.	Settings opens straight to Basics. No sign-in row, no Google services page.

What you get

🧩 Real browser extensions on your phone. Password managers, ad blockers, dark mode — the
same extensions you'd use on a desktop. Tap an extension's icon and its window opens properly,
and you can pin the ones you use most to the toolbar. Upstream only exposes this on tablet-width
layouts; here it works at phone widths too.

🔗 Links open in the browser, not in apps. Tapping a Reddit or YouTube result keeps you in
the browser instead of throwing you into their app mid-read. Phone numbers and email links still
open the right app.

📵 De-Googled. No background check-ins, and nothing about the forms you fill in gets sent off
for analysis. Google's built-in AI features are removed entirely, not just switched off.

🧹 No dead Google UI. Settings opens straight to what you can actually change — no sign-in
prompts, no Google services page, no password manager row that only says it stopped working.

🎬 Video still works, and fullscreen behaves. Ordinary video plays, and so does paid
streaming — usually the first thing to break in a privacy-focused browser. Fullscreen respects
your rotation lock and fills the screen properly.

🛡️ Still safe to browse. Protections against fake certificates and downgraded connections are
deliberately kept. Privacy here doesn't come at the cost of security.

🐛 Two crashes fixed. The stock build crashes when you open an extension's window, and again
if you tap sign-in.

Install

Requires an arm64 Android device (Android 10 / SDK 29 or newer).

adb install -r ChromiumExtend-v1.1-153.0.7999.0-arm64.apk

Or copy the APK to the device and open it. You'll need to allow installing from unknown sources.

This APK is signed with a local debug key, so it will not upgrade over a Play Store Chrome or
Chromium install — it installs as its own app (org.chromium.chrome). It will upgrade cleanly
over v1.0.

What's removed

Twelve patches: two crash fixes, the phone-layout extensions toolbar, seven de-Googling changes
covering the variations seed fetch, network-time queries, Autofill form-structure uploads, the
Google Cloud Messaging push channel, the omnibox guards that unblock removing the Google XR SDKs,
and two settings cleanups — plus the two fullscreen video fixes above.

Five build flags remove ML Kit and AICore (the on-device Gemini Nano bridge), the
Gemini-in-Chrome surface, the Reporting API, local service discovery and mDNS.

Worth knowing: a public Chromium build already sends no usage metrics, no URL-keyed metrics and
no crash reports, because upstream withholds those endpoints from forks. Translate is likewise
inert without a Google API key. Those needed no patching.

Known limitations

• Search engine still defaults to Google. Changeable in Settings → Search engine. The
  shipped default is not yet patched.
• Passkeys (WebAuthn) do not work. FIDO2_PRIVILEGED_API is restricted to Google-signed
  browsers, so any self-built Chromium is refused. Inherent to self-building, not caused by
  these patches.
• Web Push is gone, as a consequence of removing the GCM channel.
• Extension popups can be cropped. Extensions size their popup to content and may request a
  width wider than a phone screen.
• The omnibox is squeezed when several extensions are pinned. Unpinning all but one works
  around it.
• The New Tab Page and first-run screen still carry Google branding. The first-run screen
  also claims usage and crash data are sent to Google, which is untrue in this build.
• Widevine is detected, but protected playback has not been exercised end to end.

Verified

Tested on a Pixel 10 Pro XL (arm64, Android 17): no crashes across a full session, extensions
install and run with working popups and pinning, both original crash reproductions are gone, and
the shipped manifest contains zero ML Kit or AICore references. Fullscreen video was checked in
both portrait and landscape, with the system rotation lock both on and off.

License

BSD-3-Clause. The patches modify Chromium source and are subject to Chromium's license.
Chromium is a trademark of Google LLC. This project is unaffiliated.

Chromium Extend v1.0

A de-Googled build of Chromium Desktop Android that keeps browser extensions and video
playback working.

Built from Chromium 153.0.7999.0 (commit 945b5115) with ten patches and five build flags.

Screenshots

Extension icons in the toolbar. Pinned extensions sit beside the address bar.	The extensions menu on a phone. Per-site permissions and Pin to toolbar — upstream only offers this at tablet widths.
An extension's own window. Dark Reader running from the toolbar, exactly as on a desktop.	Settings opens straight to Basics. No sign-in row, no Google services page.

What you get

🧩 Real browser extensions on your phone. Password managers, ad blockers, dark mode — the
same extensions you'd use on a desktop. Tap an extension's icon and its window opens properly,
and you can pin the ones you use most to the toolbar. Upstream only exposes this on tablet-width
layouts; here it works at phone widths too.

🔗 Links open in the browser, not in apps. Tapping a Reddit or YouTube result keeps you in
the browser instead of throwing you into their app mid-read. Phone numbers and email links still
open the right app.

📵 De-Googled. No background check-ins, and nothing about the forms you fill in gets sent off
for analysis. Google's built-in AI features are removed entirely, not just switched off.

🧹 No dead Google UI. Settings opens straight to what you can actually change — no sign-in
prompts, no Google services page, no password manager row that only says it stopped working.

🎬 Video still works. Ordinary video plays, and so does paid streaming — usually the first
thing to break in a privacy-focused browser.

🛡️ Still safe to browse. Protections against fake certificates and downgraded connections are
deliberately kept. Privacy here doesn't come at the cost of security.

🐛 Two crashes fixed. The stock build crashes when you open an extension's window, and again
if you tap sign-in.

Install

Requires an arm64 Android device (Android 10 / SDK 29 or newer).

adb install -r ChromiumExtend-v1.0-153.0.7999.0-arm64.apk

Or copy the APK to the device and open it. You'll need to allow installing from unknown sources.

This APK is signed with a local debug key, so it will not upgrade over a Play Store Chrome or
Chromium install — it installs as its own app (org.chromium.chrome).

What's removed

Ten patches: two crash fixes, the phone-layout extensions toolbar, and seven de-Googling
changes covering the variations seed fetch, network-time queries, Autofill form-structure
uploads, the Google Cloud Messaging push channel, the omnibox guards that unblock removing the
Google XR SDKs, and two settings cleanups.

Five build flags remove ML Kit and AICore (the on-device Gemini Nano bridge), the
Gemini-in-Chrome surface, the Reporting API, local service discovery and mDNS.

Worth knowing: a public Chromium build already sends no usage metrics, no URL-keyed metrics and
no crash reports, because upstream withholds those endpoints from forks. Translate is likewise
inert without a Google API key. Those needed no patching.

Known limitations

• Search engine still defaults to Google. Changeable in Settings → Search engine. The
  shipped default is not yet patched.
• Passkeys (WebAuthn) do not work. FIDO2_PRIVILEGED_API is restricted to Google-signed
  browsers, so any self-built Chromium is refused. Inherent to self-building, not caused by
  these patches.
• Web Push is gone, as a consequence of removing the GCM channel.
• Extension popups can be cropped. Extensions size their popup to content and may request a
  width wider than a phone screen.
• The omnibox is squeezed when several extensions are pinned. Unpinning all but one works
  around it.
• The New Tab Page and first-run screen still carry Google branding. The first-run screen
  also claims usage and crash data are sent to Google, which is untrue in this build.
• Widevine is detected, but protected playback has not been exercised end to end.

Verified

Tested on a Pixel 10 Pro XL (arm64, Android 17) and an emulator of the same spec: no crashes
across a full session, extensions install and run with working popups and pinning, both original
crash reproductions are gone, and the shipped manifest contains zero ML Kit or AICore references.

License

The patches modify Chromium source and are subject to Chromium's BSD-3-Clause license.
Chromium is a trademark of Google LLC. This project is unaffiliated.