Privacy Browser Android 3.16 was released on 20 November 2023. It adds the ability to import and export bookmarks in HTML format, which allows importing bookmarks from other browsers. The bookmarks HTML format doesn’t include an option to store a folder icon (folder icons aren’t supported in any other browser that I am aware of…

Privacy Browser 3.4 has been released. It replaces the use of Android’s built-in download manager with a custom implementation. I didn’t start off trying to do this. Rather, I was building a feature to save a raw URL, and after I had done it I realized I could use it for all download purposes. As…

There appears to be a bug in Android’s Download Manager on Android 9 Pie that causes it to periodically crash and refuse to download files. New downloads will show up as queued, but will fail to download. I’m assuming that at some stage Google will release an update that fixes this, but in the meantime…

Privacy Browser 3.5 has been released. It switches to using Android’s relatively new Day/Night theme, which constitutes the largest UI change since the original Privacy Browser was released. This fixes a longstanding bug with alert dialogs in the dark theme, makes the app font colors easier on the eye in dark mode, and fights burn-in.…

Privacy Browser includes the following URL modifications, which are enabled by default. Each of these queries are stripped out as well as everything that follows them. An example URL looks like this: Privacy Browser strips out anything from the first ?utm_ forward, turning the URL into: Tracking Queries Privacy Browser blocks all the trackers listed…

From time to time I receive feedback from individuals regarding the layout of privacy browser on small screens. Usually this feedback relates to eliminating an element that they feel is not important enough to warrant the space utilization or diminishing the size of the fonts so that more information can fit on the screen. I…

As part of the Android, Google ships WebView, which is used to render HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. This is one of the standard views in Android Open Source Project (some others being TextView, EditText, Spinner, and ImageView). Privacy Browser uses WebView to render websites. If you do not have WebView on your system, Privacy Browser…

Privacy Browser has the ability for the user to select a custom search engine. The purpose of this page is to explain the search engine URL syntax. Privacy Browser expects to be able to append a search term to the search custom URL. What this URL looks like varies based on the search engine, but…

Privacy Browser 2.11 has been released. The major new feature is a Requests activity that shows how many requests were made and how many were blocked. Tapping on an individual request displays further details. The Requests entry in the navigation menu displays the number of blocked requests. I have written some information about how the…